Mobile tariffs to move south; TRAI reduces charges for national roaming calls

NEW DELHI: Ceiling tariffs for national roaming calls and SMS are likely to move south as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has mandated telecom service providers (TSPs) to offer a special roaming tariff plan with effect from May 1, 2015.

On roaming, Trai has fixed ceiling for outgoing local calls at 80 paise minute, down from Rs 1 a minute, while it reduced the calling rate to Rs 1.15 per minute from Rs 1.50 a minute for long distance, or STD.

Incoming calls on roaming will be charged 45 paise per minute, down from 75 paise earlier, while a maximum of 25 paise per SMS will be charged for a local message sent compared to Rs 1 earlier, and to 38 paise per STD SMSes sent, down from Rs 1.50.

According to the telecom regulator, “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.”

As per the existing framework for telecom access services, the country has been divided into 22 licensed service areas.

"Tariffs for national roaming services were last revised in 2013 through the Telecommunications Tariff Order (55th Amendment), 2013 dated 17.06.2013. While formulating the revised tariff regime for national roaming, TRAI had indicated that the new tariff regime shall be subject to review after a year,” a statement said.

In addition, after examining the comments of the stakeholders and further analysis, the Authority has revised the ceiling tariffs for voice calls and SMS while on national roaming as below.