Rediif: Mobile Users not impressed with new rate cuts. Sunil Mittal of Bharti Telecom clarified that the customers would have to pay charges for long distance call from cell to fixed line. … Ashim Ghosh of Hutch said that there was no question of offering free incoming calls. The GSM cellcos are still in denial. There are 42 million landlines in India (versus 9 million GSM cellphones). Creating a gated community of mobile GSM users will not help, especially as each CDMA user can interop with landlines seamlessly. What these people need to do is lobby to remove the interconnection tariff that they pay. And offer free incoming, no strings attached. (Britain’s 7-prefixed cell numbers is a good model, one knows one has to pay more to call the number). But considering these guys negotiating skills (heck, they can’t even decide termination charges so that they can offer cell-to-cell incoming free) I am not surprised they have made no headway with the TRAI so far.

On another note, I’m still waiting for BSNL and Bharti’s long-distance price-drop announcement.