Unlike a normal call where the caller has to pay, in a collect call system the person who receives the call is billed for the call. India Direct will allow people to call India and the called party in India will be charged in rupees.

"India Direct is a very convenient and useful service and is similar to USA Direct and other home country direct services that are available to travellers in India," said PS Saran, member (services), DoT.

To use the service, a person in a foreign country calls a unique number and is automatically connected to an MTNL operator in Mumbai. The MTNL operator will then pass the call on to the desired number in India having first checked that the calledparty is ready to bear the charges.

The called party will be billed depending on the duration of the call at operator assisted international outgoing call rates. However, there will be a minimum charge, which will be equivalent to a three minute call in addition to a call surcharge of one minute irrespective of whether the call duration is three minutes or less. Also, for the additional duration billing would be done using a slab of one minute.

According to a VSNL press release, India Direct services will initially be made available from 16 countries which include USA, UK, UAE, Australia, Baharain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa and Taiwan. The service will be extended to more countries shortly.

INSIGHT
May find few takers

The introduction of the call collect service is unlikely to be a big hit. There would be few takers for the service as the calls will be billed at international outgoing rates. And India's outgoing callrates are one of the highest in the world and the difference in rates are much steeper when compared to the cheap rates in the western countries. Moreover, most of the incoming calls originate from these western countries. In fact, callback services in the USA and western countries have made a business out of re-routing international calls so that they originate from their countries, and the caller can take advantage of the low rates. All this would ensure that the new service would be under utilised.