Roaming Charges in India slashed.....

CorpoAlert

India's telecoms regulator on Wednesday slashed tariffs for national roaming on mobile networks by up to 56 percent, further reducing already low call rates in the fastest growing mobile market in the world.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said the new tariffs, effective from Feb. 15, would be applicable for the dominant GSM network as well as the CDMA platform.

It fixed a ceiling of 1.40 rupees a minute for outgoing local calls while roaming, 2.40 rupees for outgoing long-distance calls and 1.75 rupees for incoming calls, regardless of the distance.

Subscribers can receive text messages for free, while outgoing messages would still be charged.

Mobile operators will not be allowed to charge a fixed rental fee for roaming or a surcharge on roaming services.
The new charges would cut roaming tariffs by 22 to 56 percent, the TRAI Web site showed.

"While competition in mobile services has reached a satisfactory level, the same is not true for roaming segment of the mobile services," TRAI said.

"The authority would closely monitor market developments on roaming and if perceptible competition evolves in the market, it would revisit the issue," a statement said, describing the new tariffs as "simple, transparent and distance neutral."

The regulator had started a consultation on tariffs for national roaming last November.

India has about 147 million mobile users in a nation of more than a billion people, and has been adding about 6 million new users a month, with tariffs as low as 2-3 U.S. cents a minute.

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