The wireless in local loop-based limited mobility telecom service operators are now slugging it out among themselves, setting up new tariff standards in the process.

While Reliance Infocomm has offered a new package under its Dhirubhai Ambani Pioneer offer, Tata Teleservices on Tuesday announced two tariff packages-Tata Indicom 2000 and Tata Indicom 3000 -- matching Reliance's tariffs.

TTSL on Tuesday offered a CDMA mobile connection, including the handset, for an initial payment of only Rs 2,600 under the Tata Indicom 2000 plan.

The monthly rental is Rs 450 and the customer needs to pay an additional Rs 150 per month towards handset recovery charges over a period of 24 months.

Under Reliance's DAP offer, the customer has to make an upfront payment of Rs 3,000 and Rs 600 per month for three years.

This amount includes a rental component of Rs 240, usage charge of Rs 160, club privilege amount of Rs 100 and plan financing charge of  Rs 100.

Reliance offers two plan financing options - in the first option, Rs 3,000 has to be put upfront and in the second option, Rs 21,000 for the entire three years has to be paid upfront. The latter option carries an inbuilt discount of Rs 3,600.

But Reliance Infocomm offers a 15 seconds pulse rate while TTSL has decided to continue with a three-minute pulse.

TTSL is offering 190 free local calling units (equivalent to 570 minutes of free calls) while Reliance offers 400 minutes of free outgoing calls per month.

TTSL plans to charge Rs 1.10 for each three-minute call (beyond 190 free calls) as against Reliance's offer to charge all outgoing beyond 400 minutes at standard BSNL/MTNL rates.

"Even though the tariff packages of these two WLL operators look comparable, Reliance Infocomm's offer of 40 paise a minute for STD calls as well as for international long distance calls would attract the customer. We will have to still see what this 20 per cent discount is being offered by TTSL on the international calls," say analysts.

However, S Ramakrishnan, managing director of Tata Teleservices point out that "the new tariffs of Tata Teleservices, are all about providing the best value-for-money proposition to the end customer. The Tata Indicom 2000 & 3000 tariff plans are based on making a CDMA mobile phone available on a flexible payment model and in keeping with a customers usage pattern. In the end, It's all about empowering a customer to stretch his rupee to the maximum."