State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd have decided to take on private cellular firms by announcing competitive tariff plans.

The new schemes, cleared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, will be available from May 1. Trai also cleared the new plans of Tata Tele.

Both MTNL and BSNL have tailored their tariff plans to meet the different usage patterns of their subscribers. MTNL has retained a pulse rate of 180 seconds on each of its three plans.

On the other hand, BSNL has kept it unchanged only for calls from one fixed line to another, but halved it for calls from a fixed to a WLL (mobile) phone.

For calls from fixed to cellular phones, the pulse rate has been reduced to one minute in metro areas, and to 30 seconds in circles.

Keeping inter-circle long distance tariffs unchanged, BSNL has halved the charges on intra-circle calls beyond 200 km to Rs 2.40 a minute.

Also, tariff for inter-circle long distance (beyond 200 km) calls from fixed to cellular phones has been cut by 25 per cent to Rs 3.60 a minute.

BSNL has sharply increased the pulse rate for Internet access during off-peak hours (2330-0630 IST) to 10 minutes from the current 3 minutes.

Users will pay only Rs 7 an hour for Net access during this period. The peak hour pulse rate has, however, been retained at 3 minutes.

MTNL's Plan I, with a monthly rental of Rs 250, retains call charges at 80 paise for up to 300 calls and Rs 1.20 for up to 2,000 calls.

In Plan II, customers have to pay Rs 280 a month as rental to avail facilities like abbreviated dialling, call transfer, e-mail on phone and three-party conferencing.

For heavy users, MTNL has offered 2,000 free calls a month on a rental of Rs 2,000. To encourage users to talk more, it has cut call tariff to Re 1 for over 2,000 calls a month. Moreover, all subscribers can now avail of the free calling line identification facility.

BSNL has announced four plans for urban users and three for rural subscribers.

Besides the basic plan, with a monthly rental between Rs 120 and Rs 250, BSNL's urban users can avail of three other plans -- economy, special and super.

Under the general plan, BSNL has reduced the number of free calls to 30 from the current 60. Users will pay 80 paise per call for up to 300 calls, and Rs 1.20 beyond that.

The economy plan, with a monthly rental of Rs 350, allows 150 free calls. Subscribers will have to pay Rs 1.20 per call. Under the special plan, the rental has been fixed at Rs 750 a month with 600 free calls.

For calls beyond the free limit, users will pay Rs 1.10 per call. The super plan offers 1,800 free calls for a monthly rental of Rs 1,650.

Beyond 1,800 calls, subscribers have to pay Re 1 per call. For rural areas, BSNL has announced three plans -- general, economy and special.

Under the general plan, the rental varies between Rs 50 and Rs 210 a month, and comes with 50 free calls.

The cost per call has been fixed at 80 paise for the first 300 calls and Rs 1.20 beyond that. Under the economy plan, the rental has been fixed at Rs 150. The plan allows 150 free calls a month, beyond which a subscriber has to pay Rs 1.20 a call.

For those who avail of the special plan, the rental has been set at Rs 650 a month. The allows for 700 free calls, beyond which each call will cost Rs 1.10.