Terming its proposed move to reduce pulse rate for basic to mobile calls as "non-discriminatory", Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd on Tuesday expressed hope that revenue impact on account of new customer-friendly packages would be compensated by surge in volumes by up to 25 per cent in certain places.

"In the new landline tariff package, two factors -- unchanged rentals and call duration may have an impact of Rs 400 to 500 crore (Rs 4-5 billion) but we believe that traffic increase would compensate for this," BSNL's director finance S D Saxena told reporters in New Delhi.

BSNL chairman and managing director Prithipal Singh said the corporation had no objections to implementation of interconnect usage charges or IUC regime from May 1.

On the tariff packages, Singh said, "All these tariff packages for calls made to cellular services are applicable to BSNL as well. The charges are non-discriminatory to other operators."

Calls from BSNL fixed to BSNL cellphone would carry the same charge as applicable to other operators, he pointed out.

On the loss accruing to the corporation with the implementation of the tariff package from May 1, Singh said, "Earlier we were not paying anything to cell operators now we will have to pay for IUC charge, that would be an additional burden."

Stating that the losses on account of low tariffs would get offset by the increased volumes, Singh said in certain places the surge in volumes could be up to 25 per cent.