DoT slams TRAI’s move to lower roaming tariff

The telecom department (DoT) has criticized Trai's move to lower roaming tariffs and said that the regulator has followed the one-nation, one-roaming principle, outlined by Kapil Sibal in the National Telecom Policy, only 'in letter and not in spirit'. Trai had lowered roaming tariffs by 30% earlier this week but has categorically said that fully free roaming was 'simply not practical'.

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal had planned to introduce free roaming by March this year, but then pushed the deadline to October after mobile phone companies opposed the move. Operators argued that forcible imposition of free roaming would result in losses of more than Rs 10,000 crore for the entire industry.

Sibal has been keen on introducing the one-nation, one-roaming plan where consumers from one circle can use the same number in another circle and not pay charges for roaming on another circle's network. India has 22 telecom zones, operators offer different tariff plans for different zones.

Trai chairman Rahul Khullar, while lowering roaming tariffs, had said that putting in place fully free roaming was not a possibility. "Fully free roaming is simply not practical... It can't work," he had said earlier this week. He had explained that free incoming calls were the biggest problem as operators will not be able to recover their carriage costs when a consumer travels out of the home circle and roams on another carrier's network without paying any charges.

Khullar had added that the partial tweaking of tariffs instead of complete abolition will mitigate any erosion of revenue from roaming which it estimated to be around Rs 2,500 crore. Trai's calculations show that incremental cost for roaming comes out to be 10 paise per minute after taking into consideration the usage, revenue and cost of offering roaming services.

National roaming refers to facilities for making and receiving calls and SMS when the subscriber is travelling in a state which is different from the state of his residence. Once roaming charges are waived consumers can get incoming calls free of charge and make outgoing calls at local rates from anywhere in the country.

Trai had said that from July 1 onwards, outgoing local calls will be charged 1 per minute and outgoing STD calls will be charged maximum of 1.5 per minute, as per the new rules. Similarly, mobile phone companies will charge incoming calls on national roaming at 75 paise per minute from next month, compared to 1.75 per minute at present.

While incoming SMS will continue to be free, outgoing local will cost Re 1 per SMS and outgoing SMS on STD to cost Rs 1.5 per SMS. Special tariff vouchers and combo vouchers, which were till now allowed only for home tariffs, will be permitted for roaming tariffs.

This means that for outgoing local calls, roaming tariffs have been reduced by 29% while a 38% cut has been introduced in outgoing STD calls. Further, mobile phone companies have been mandated to offer two tariff plans for roaming. In the first, incoming calls will not be free and may be equal to the tariffs offered in the home circle. In the second, operators will not charge for any incoming calls but will charge a fixed rate for availing the plan.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/2647-dot-slams-trai%E2%80%99s-move-to-lower-roaming-tariff.html
Source: http://cablequest.org/news/telecom-news/item/2647-dot-slams-trai%E2%80%99s-move-to-lower-roaming-tariff.html