The battle for the pre-paid mobile segment is gearing up with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd announcing the cheapest tariffs for its pre-paid card, Excel.

Cell-to-cell calls on Excel are available at Rs 2.20 per minute, while cell-to-fixed calls are charged at Rs 2.40 per minute. Over 65 per cent of the 13.3 million cell users in India use pre-paid cards.

"Our aim is to be the cheapest and the best in cellular services. Our tariff packages are simple and easily understood by consumers," said Prithipal Singh, chairman and managing director, BSNL.

The company has the lowest cell-to-fixed tariffs in the post-paid category. It also offers the lowest tariff for short messaging services at 60 paise per message.

Private operators like Bharti, which is charging Rs 1.50 per message, is expected to announce a similar tariff for SMS shortly.

BSNL is also tapping the heavy users by offering corporate discounts of 5 per cent for bills between Rs 100,000 and Rs 200,000, while a 10 per cent discount is being offered to users with bills of over Rs 200,000.

BSNL is also offering a private network for a corporate with over 1,000 employees with no outgoing or incoming charges for calls within the network.

BSNL has set a target of 100 days to become the number one cellular service operator in the country, within just 10 months of launching its services. It has already notched up 2.8 million users of which nearly 70 per cent use pre-paid services.

At present, Bharti is the number one operator in terms of subscriber base with over 3.1 million users.

Bharti, too, has around 60 per cent of its user base in the pre-paid segment.