People using the network carrier Aircel in any of the southern States can enjoy free incoming calls, and outgoing calls (both local and STD) at 1 paise per second, while roaming, starting June 11.
Base ratesAircel launched its ‘Five States, One Rate’ on Wednesday, in which the customers of Aircel in South India, travelling between five States – Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – will incur no incoming charges. All SMS and Pocket Internet packs will remain unchanged and customers can continue to use them as per the already-applicable rates.
Sankara Narayanan K, Strategic Business Unit Head, Aircel, said that this offer requires no separate recharge or pack activation as it will be activated by default for all Aircel customers irrespective of prepaid or postpaid services.
Earlier, incoming calls used to cost 45 paise per minute and outgoing calls were charged at ₹1.15 per minute while roaming. Though roaming-unique users had increased from 9 per cent to 30 per cent in the last four years, close to 40 per cent of them did not answer incoming calls, Narayanan said, and added that this proposition is introduced to address the issue.
In addition to having 70 per cent unique roaming customers in their network, South India has huge traffic movement for livelihood and business purposes between the Bengaluru-Hosur-Chennai-Hyderabad-Tirupati-Coimbatore-Thiruvananthapuram-Palakkad corridors, he said.
These are the reasons for beginning the scheme in the South, he added.
Elango, Marketing Head (South India), Aircel, said that of the 4-crore customer base across South India, Tamil Nadu has a customer base of 2 crore.