Policy & Regulation TRAI reduces ceilings for national roaming calls and SMS TT Correspondent | | 18 Jun 2013 Here is good news for telecom subscribers as TRAI has reduced ceilings for national roaming calls and SMS and instituted a new regime for providing flexibility to telecom service providers to customise tariffs for national roamers through STVs and Combo Vouchers. This has been done to establish a tariff regime in which roamers self-select themselves out and so minimize the impact on the rest of the subscriber community The ceiling tariffs prescribed by TRAI in the year 2007 were Rs. 1.40 per minute for outgoing local calls and Rs.2.40 per minute for outgoing STD calls while on national roaming. “These ceilings have been reduced to Re. 1.00 per minute and Re. 1.50 per minute respectively. Similarly, the ceiling tariffs for incoming calls while on national roaming have been reduced from Rs. 1.75 per minute to Re. 0.75 per minute. Tariffs for outgoing SMS while on national roaming which were earlier under forbearance have now been capped: outgoing SMS-local at Re. 1.00 per SMS and outgoing SMS-STD at Rs. 1.50 per SMS. Incoming SMS will remain free of charge” Trai said in a statement. Following the announcement shares of telecom services provider are trading higher by up to 2% in otherwise subdued market. Among the individual stocks, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular are up nearly 2% each at Rs 113 and Rs 142 respectively, while Bharti Airtel is up 1% at Rs 300 on BSE. TRAI has also mandated two types of free national roaming plans to be provided by all telecom service providers. These changes will come into effect from 1st July 2013. The present exercise to review national roaming tariffs was initiated by TRAI earlier this year in the context of decline in costs and the declared intent in the New Telecom Policy-2012 to move towards One Nation-Free Roaming throughout the country. Trai said that with increased subscribers and usage, the costs associated with national roaming have declined, but not vanished. There are still real costs incurred in providing the national roaming facility. Mandating a fully free roaming regime is simply not practicable at this juncture. Compelling a transition to a fully free national roaming regime would result in telecom service providers not being able to recover their costs from roamers. In turn, telecom service providers would pass these costs on to all consumers (predominantly non-roamers) through higher tariffs. In working towards free roaming, TRAI has also borne in mind the need to keep costs to roamers at a minimum. In this context, TRAI has decided that Special Tariff Vouchers (STVs) and Combo Vouchers which were hitherto allowed only for home tariffs can be permitted for roaming tariffs. This will give the service providers the greatest possible flexibility in customizing tariffs for their roaming subscribers. Further, TRAI has also mandated the service providers to offer special plans for roaming subscribers in which such subscribers can avail of partially free roaming, or fully free roaming in lieu of payment of fixed charges.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:34:16 +0000