Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has finally announced that it has reduced ceiling tariffs for national roaming calls and SMS.
It also announced that special roaming tariff plan are mandatory for all the operators. Making roaming calls cheaper will let you pay less for voice calls you make or receive when you are roaming outside your circle.
Starting from 1 May, mobile calls while in roaming will be cheaper by up to 23 percent, while sending a local SMS will cost only Rs. 0.25, a steep cut of 75 percent from the present Re. 1, as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has slashed tariff ceilings.
Under the revised tariff, a telecom operator can charge a maximum of Rs. 0.80 per minute for a local call instead of Re. 1 permitted at present.
The regulator had earlier proposed to bring down outgoing STD calls to Re. 1 a minute and local calls to Rs. 0.65 but could not do following protest from telecom operators.
Rates for national roaming services were earlier revised in 2013. Following this order, subscribers will not be able to avail of schemes that allowed them to make calls and send messages while roaming at home circle rates.
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 area
