Indian mobile phone firms are expected on January 2, 2003 to further reduce call charges in a bid to prevent users shifting to cheaper limited mobility services, according to Reuters. The Business Standard newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said mobile operators could reduce rates on national long distance calls, make mobile-to-mobile calls free and announce a phased reduction in tariffs to match rates offered by limited radius service providers. Major cellular firms are likely to come up with plans to match tariffs of newly-launched services from Reliance Infocomm, a telecoms unit of the powerful Reliance group. The Reliance service is priced at 0.40 rupees a minute for outgoing calls, while incoming calls, voicemail, text messaging and Internet access are free of charge. India's major cellular firms are Bharti Tele-Ventures, Hutch, the Indian telecoms unit of Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa, and Idea Cellular. There are more than 10 million mobile customers in India and the number is expected to grow to 120 million by 2008. The number of limited mobility users exceeds 500,000.
