Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has slashed ceiling tariffs for national Roaming services which will come into effect from May 1, 2015.
“Trai has mandated telecom service providers to offer a special roaming tariff plan. These changes will come into effect from May 1, 2015,” TRAI said in a statement on Thursday.
As per the new tariffs, the maximum rate (ceiling rate) that a operator can charge on STD call rates is Rs 1.15 which was Rs 1.5 earlier. For outgoing local voice calls on roaming, operators have to charge just to Rs 0.80 per minute instead of Rs 1 at present while incoming local call charges on roaming has been reduced to Rs 0.45 per minute from 75 paise now.
Post TRAI’s new rate cards, sending SMS while on roaming has got even more cheaper. Now you just have to pay 38 paise per SMS for national SMSes while presently we are paying Rs 1.50 per SMS – a huge reduction of 75 per cent. SMSes in home circle while on roaming will cost Rs 0.25 per against Rs 1 earlier.
To remove ambiguity, TRAI has also directed operators to withdraw existing special roaming schemes that allowed subscribers to pay same charges as his home service area for outgoing local and STD calls as well as SMS during roaming. However, it has allowed operators to offer Special Roaming Tariff Plans under which users can enjoy free incoming voice calls while on roaming on payment of fixed charges.
National roaming service is the facility provided to a subscriber to avail services subscribed in its home network, while travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network. As per the existing framework for telecom access services, the country has been divided into 22 licensed service areas. Licenses are issued separately for each licensed service area. When a subscriber avails mobile services outside his home network, within the country, national roaming becomes applicable.