Bharti Airtel, Idea Take Lead, Roll Out 'Free Roaming Plans' - Light Reading India

Following Trai's recent move to slash ceilings for national roaming calls and SMSs, India's two leading telcos— Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular waived off call charges on roaming and introduced free roaming plans.  Idea Cellular, which is country's third largest mobile operator, has launched two new vouchers, which offers roaming calling rates with Home calling rates, without any additional charges. The telco has reduced incoming roaming charges to 75 paise/minute for users who avail Rs 35-40 voucher, whereas incoming is free for those who avail Rs 230-240 voucher.  Idea's new value vouchers offer the same rates for Local, STD, ISD calling, and SMS, as the user pays for using these services while in the home circle. Idea users who recharge with the new vouchers will be able to enjoy the roaming benefits for 6 months from the date of recharge.  Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular said, "Idea's pan-India network will now allow over 123 million Idea users to roam freely across the country, without worrying about additional roaming charges." Bharti Airtel on the other hand also launched two plans for its prepaid subscribers. The first plan allows its prepaid customers to receive free calls on roaming with Rs 5 a day. For, outgoing calls on roaming, customers will have to pay 1.5 paise per second or 90 paise per minute. The second plan enables prepaid customers to avail the same benefits for Rs 79 a month. It is expected that more telcos will join Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular with their special free roaming plans. Although, the plans are initially introduced for prepaid customers only and telcos could roll out similar offerings for their postpaid customers. In January this year, Aircel launched one rate for Voice, SMS and Data in home circles and on roaming on Aircel network under One Nation, One Rate product. The telco is yet to roll out roaming plans in line with Trai's recent mandate. Last month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) reduced ceilings for national roaming calls and SMS and introduced a new regime for providing flexibility to telcos to offer customized tariffs for roaming through Special Tariff Vouchers (STVs) and combo vouchers.  (See: TRAI Says Free Roaming Not Practical, Slashes Tariff) The Trai's move came as a breather for the Indian telcos, who had been opposing the nationwide free roaming regime, which was announced last year by the Indian government. The Indian telcos were of the view that implementation of free roaming will impose financial burden on them. Even Trai also said that mandating a fully free national roaming regime is not practical, since real costs are still incurred in providing the national roaming facility by the telcos. (See: Free Roaming Postponed Again!) Earlier, commenting on the national roaming regime, Deepak Kumar, founder analyst at BusinessandMarket.nets said, "While 3G data uptake has risen, the revenues have not gone up proportionately, hence telcos business dependence on voice remains high. The industry would be in a position to absorb the impact of free voice roaming only when the data revenue rises beyond the threshold point. With Trai's view on roaming and operators' concerns on operational costs, it seems that the complete free roaming regime on national level would not come into existence any time soon.  --Danish Khan, Correspondent Light Reading India  via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNF__sAsTAWUsnVsJED2bXabXdkOdg&url=http://www.lightreading.in/lightreadingindia/news-analysis/171879/bharti-airtel-idea-lead-roll-free-roaming-plans

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