The company has also sweetened the deal for corporates by charging Rs 17,000 for a business page and Rs 25,500 for a premium business page, which translates into a 15 per cent saving as compared to VSNL charges of Rs 20,000 for a business page and Rs 30,000 for the premium page.

Web sites and pages are increasingly becoming an important medium of advertising for companies, as they enable them to reach out to millions of potential customers who surf the net.

The company will charge a one-time registration fee of Rs 1,000 for all three versions, in addition to a Rs 3,000 annual fee for hosting a page and providing e-mail service. It will also charge Rs 1,000 for every update done via the MTNL service.

The MTNL sites will offer other features including minimum spaceof 1 MB, 2 MB and 5 MB for the three pages. Data transfer of 500 MB per month will be the norm, except for premium page users who will be able to transfer 1 GB data every month. The service also features FTP access, CGI, usage statistics and five e-mail identifications (IDs) for premium users.

For hosting a web server (a WWW server site on MTNL premises), involving data transfer at 1 GB per month, 10 GB per month and 30 GB per month, the tariffs will be as follows: For three months Rs 0.6375 lakh, Rs 1.275 lakh and Rs 2.55 lakh, for six months -- Rs 1.275 lakh, Rs 2.55 lakh and Rs 5.1 lakh, for 12 month --- Rs 2.55 lakh, Rs 5.1 lakh and Rs 10.2 lakh.

In addition, the cut in leased line and port charges will provide a major boost to MTNL revenues. Annual tariff for leased line ports (nodes for data traffic) vary from Rs 8 lakh for a 2.4 kbps port at the lower end to Rs 33.1 lakh for 1 mbps and Rs 55.4 lakh for 2 mbps.

Annual tariffs for local leased line connections (used for dedicated high speed datatransfer) are also quite low. At 64 kbps, MTNL will charge Rs 1,50,000 up to 50 km, Rs 1,80,000 for 51-100 km and Rs 2,75,000 for 101-200 km, every year. For a 2 mbps leased line, the company will charge Rs 12,00,000 up to 50 km, Rs 16,00,000 for 51-100 km and Rs 24,00,000 for 101-200 km.