Thursday, February 23 2006 16:39 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Communication and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran today (Feb 23 2006) welcomed telecom regulator TRAI's decision to ring in a new Access Deficit Charge regime, under which a levy private operators have to pay state-owned BSNL has been reduced by 33 per cent.

"BSNL was anticipating this and had taken into account all these before announcing the OneIndia tariff under which domestic long distance STD call would cost just Re 1 across the country," he said when asked to comment on the new ADC regime's impact on BSNL.

Both BSNL and MTNL are gearing up to the competiton and particularly BSNL knew that such a regime was coming.

In other words, Maran indicated that BSNL was aware of such a regime and was ready to face the implications.

ADC is a fee that private operators have to pay to subsidise rural telephony.