In yet another step to fight Reliance Jio’s offers, the country’s largest telecom services provider Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Monday announced it would provide free national roaming from April 1.
Starting April 1, Airtel customers roaming within India will enjoy free incoming calls/SMS and there will be no premium on outgoing calls allowing them to speak freely wherever they are within the country, the company said.
Also, there will be no additional data charges on national roaming. Home data packs for customers will apply even while they roam across India, it said.
“This marks the death of national roaming and the whole country will now be like a local network for our customers, who will not have to think twice before making or receiving calls or using data while travelling outside their home base,” Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (India & South Asia), Airtel said.
or international roaming also, Airtel has already launched innovative and affordable packs for all major countries across the world. These packs come with convenient validity options of one-day, 10 days, and 30 days and offer benefits including free incoming calls/SMS, calling minutes and texts both to India and the local country as well as data to stay online.
However, there are still several cases of customers inadvertently failing to choose these packs and suffering bill shocks due to the steep roaming charges on international networks, the company said.
Starting April 1, 2017, even customers on international roaming without a pack will be fully protected from bill shocks through an automatic adjustment that is equal to the daily pack for that particular country, it said.
This means that the moment a customer’s billing reaches the price of a one-day pack for the country, he/she will be automatically moved to that pack. This will allow our customers to use their devices abroad without any fear.
Even post the exhaustion of pack benefits, customers can continue with attractive rates for calling and data usage. Call charges have been reduced by up to 90 per cent to as low as ₹3 per minute and data charges by up to 99 per cent to ₹3 per MB across popular roaming destinations, Airtel said.
For instance, when a customer is travelling to the US without a pack and hits the threshold of ₹649 (the price of the one-day pack for the US), he/she will automatically move to the one-day pack with free incoming calls/SMS, 100 India and local country outgoing minutes, 300MB data and other benefits.
Similarly, a customer travelling to Singapore will move to the one-day pack the moment his/her usage hits the ₹499 mark, the company added.
“At Airtel, we are changing the international roaming paradigm, which will allow our customers to take their number to every corner of the world. As an industry, operators across the world must collaborate to remove the cost barrier to roaming and offer customers the convenience of staying connected without the fear of exorbitant bill charges,” Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Airtel said.