Escotel and Koshika are rivals in the Uttar Pradesh (west) circle. The company wants TRAI to take a view on the ``inter-operator'' dispute. Escotel's chief of marketing and sales Rajiv Burman said the complaint would be filed with TRAI on Monday.

He alleged Koshika was able to offer such low rates as it had not fulfilled its licence fee commitments of about Rs 300 crore and was leveraging this to attract customers and raise money by way of deposits. This is the second time that Escotel is appealing to TRAI against Koshika's pricing strategy.

Escotel has sought TRAI's intervention in order to put a curb on what it calls the ``crazy tariffs'' of Koshika. The company has also sought the TRAI's indulgence on the grounds that Koshika's unprecedented tariffstructure of Rs 1.20 per three minutes would cause a downslide in the market. Burman said Koshika had made a mockery of the TRAI process by announcing such low tariffs.

``Serious players in the telecom sector will not resort to such gimmicks as they are here for the long term and are committed on meeting all their committments to the government, shareholders and subscribers,'' he added.

Commenting on the issue of non-payment of licence fee, the spokesman said it was not proper on behalf of anyone to comment on a subjudice matter but added, ``There are certain pending issues with Department of Telecom. A stay has been granted by Trai. Once the issues are sorted out we are not only willing to pay the licence fee but have offered to pay it alongwith interest.''

Meanwhile, Escotel has finalised a new tariff structure in response to Koshika's dramatic announcement of providing cellular service at the rate of Rs 1.20 per three minute on Wednesday.

Escotel will move over to a break through tariff plan fromMay 7 which enables a subscriber to make outgoing calls at Rs 1 per minute. Customers will have to pay a total of Rs 9,960 including Rs 2,310 as activation fee charge, with the remaining Rs 7,650 being a refundable deposit.

Under this plan the customer will be charged a monthly membership fee of Rs 599 which includes itemised billing, caller line identification (CLI), voice mail service (VMS) and nation-wide auto-roaming facility.