The Indian government’s plan to introduce a uniform telephone call rate across the country has hit a block after telecom service providers opposed the move. Cellular operators and basic telephone operators have written to the Department of Telecommunication expressing reservations against the government intervening in tariff regulation.

Such a move is considered to be counter-productive with an increase in local calling tariffs. Dayanidhi Maran, Minister for Communications and IT, has mooted the proposal.

The Single Call Rate or OneIndia plan is a policy where calls made to any destination within the country will be treated as calls made within a state. Under this plan, there will be no diverse call rates, whether you dial a local number or a long distance one. If the dispensing of National Long Distance call rates is applicable to mobile users as well, then the subscribers needn’t pay roaming rates. If OneIndia does turn out to be what rural consumers are waiting for, telcos might rake in more revenue and teledensity will increase by 100 million customers.

However, the plan is not totally free from hurdles. The government has to study the implications and views submitted by the industry before issuing any policy guidelines. The present licensing and access deficit regimes have to be reworked before the policy can be implemented. Besides, operators will have to rework their interconnection agreements, before the country can move towards uniform rates.

The industry body representing CDMA operators such as Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices said that the government should instead focus on bringing down the cost burden on operators, which would help in lowering the tariffs automatically. The operators have also said that the government should bring out a paper on the proposed tariff regime explaining the modalities of the OneIndia plan.