Reliance Communications (RCom) has raised basic rates for both its GSM and CDMA pre-paid mobile-to-mobile calls by 33 per cent to 2 paise per second from 1.5 paise per second.
According to details on the company's website, it will charge a base rate of 2 paise per second for
mobile-to-mobile calls. The base rate, or the headline tariff, applies to customers not covered under any special scheme offered by their telecom operator.
While RCom refused to comment on the issue, sources said the company has given a declaration to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on their pricing pattern and so have other companies.
A sources said that in order to have flexibility in their pricing pattern, the tariff is put higher than actually being charged from subscribers.
"Companies generally report higher tariffs to Trai so that they are at liberty to increase tariff when needed. It takes a lot of time to get approval for the hiked tariff from Trai. So, telecom firms report higher tariffs so that they can hike them at their convenience,"said the source.
Earlier this month, RCom had increased mobile
call rates up to 30 per cent for both GSM and CDMA pre-paid customers to better profits.
While
Bharti Airtel started with higher headline tariff of 2 paisa per second in 2012, other leading players, like Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices, gradually increased their mobile-tomobile call rates to 2 paise per second.
With PTI inputs 
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