In order to woo customers,  the Department of Posts is planning to start the services of collecting parcels for speed post from homes without charging anything extra.
The DoP would rope in call centres, where customers can make toll-free calls and get their speed post packets picked up by postman from their homes, DoP General Manager John Samuel said.
DoP would also introduce a system for alerts which would inform customers about the receipt and delivery of speed post packets through SMS or e-mail.
The call centres would be set up in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad.
Speed Post, which currently has a market share of 27 per  cent, is expecting revenues to go up to Rs 550 crore in 2007-08 from Rs 449 crore at present.
The monthly traffic from speed post exceeded Rs 1.4 crore in March 2007.
With the new measures the volumes and revenues would definitely go up in future, said the DoP chief adding that there could be 40-50 per cent increase in the monthly traffic.
To make speed post competitive in the express industry, the government last week reduced the rates for local services by 40 per cent to Rs 12 from Rs 20 for up to 50 grams.
The Department would also expand its reach to 1,500 cities by the end of this year. It currently has about 5,000 booking offices across 1,200 cities.

Postal dept to enter banking
Kolkata, PTI: Concerned over the rise in interest rates on deposits by banks, the postal department is seriously considering to enter banking sector by floating Post Bank of India.
Minister for Communication and IT Shakeel Ahmed said the postal department was in talks with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Finance Ministry for setting up a full-fledged bank.
He also said the postal department was also in talks with the finance ministry for raising interest rates on small savings.