Fresh guidelines announced by TRAI today will result in reduced rates of national roaming calls and SMS, thus removing the burden from frequent travellers.
According to the new guidelines announced by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, roaming charges on outgoing local calls have been reduced from Rs. 1.40 per minute to Re. 1, whereas STD calls have been lowered from Rs. 2.40 per minute to Rs. 1.50. At the same time, incoming calls while on roaming have been reduced to 75 paise per minute from an earlier Rs. 1.75.
Outgoing SMS on national roaming will cost Re. 1 for local and Rs. 1.50 for STD messages. The new guidelines also provide flexibility to telecom service providers to customise tariffs for national roamers through STVs (Special Tariff Vouchers) and Combo Vouchers. The guidelines will come into effect from July 1st, 2013.
After the telecom operators opposed the One Nation – Free Roaming proposal, the TRAI agreed that mandating a fully free roaming regime is simply not practicable at this juncture and would cause a lot of losses for the service providers, as such the body has borne in mind the need to keep costs to roamers at a minimum till the policy can be implemented.
