While addressing the annual economic editors conference here today, Swaraj said, the terms and conditions will be decided by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting last night, she said.

Swaraj said that the deemed deputation status of the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) employees working for Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) (Group C and D) will be terminated and they will be absorbed by the MTNL, the modalities for their absorption will be decided by the DoT and MTNL, she added.

The Communications Minister said, the government has cleared the policy for Global Mobile Personal Communications by satellite (GMPC). There will be no restrictions on the number of players, she pointed out. Swaraj also announced thatretired employees of different categories of the DoT would get relief on telephone rentals and calling rates.

According to Swaraj, the entire short distance call area (SDCA) will now be treated as one local area for the purpose of charging. With this decision, calls to adjacent short distance call areas, which were being charged on STD rates, will now get the facility of inter-dialling on a basic rate of three minutes per call unit (local call rate). Earlier, local area was restricted to five km radius from the telephone exchange or the municipal boundary whichever was greater.

The Communications Minister also announced a decision to permit conference facility to STD, ISD, public call office (PCO) franchisees of the department at the existing tariff and commission.

This facility will enable the public to make STD and ISD calls from their home and premises any time of the day to operate this facility, the STD, ISD, PCO operators will be required to take an additional non-STD direct exchange telephoneconnections.

This would allow them to give STD and ISD connections to the public without blocking the local PCO (coin collecting box) installed at their premises, she said.

The Communications Minister said a final decision had been taken on two of the ten demands of postal employees relating to bonus and postmen. She said, a third demand was being looked into and was under government consideration. A meeting of the employees union had already been held in this regard.

Seven of the demands did not relate to the department and a committee had been constituted to go into it, she clarified pointing out that action was being taken on all the ten demands.

Swaraj said the TRAI was in the process of finalising the proposals regarding telecom tariff and the people's response in this regard would be taken account of.

Regarding unlinking of cable connection, she said circle operators would be provided this facility, not the metro operator.