TRAI released a draft amendment to the Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999

TRAI has today released a draft amendment to the Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999 for comments of the stakeholders. Through the Amendment Order, the Authority intends to reduce the ceiling tariffs for national roaming services.

 National roaming service is the facility provided to a subscriber to avail services subscribed in its home network, while travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network. As per the existing framework for telecom access services, the country has been divided into 22 licensed service areas. Licenses are issued separately for each licensed service area. When a subscriber avails mobile services outside his home network, within the country, national roaming becomes applicable.

Tariffs for national roaming services were last revised in 2013 through the Telecommunications Tariff Order (55th Amendment), 2013 dated 17.06.2013. While formulating the revised tariff regime for national roaming, TRAI had indicated that the new tariff regime shall be subject to review after a year.

After detailed examination, the Authority intends to reduce the ceiling tariffs for national roaming services as per the table given below:                          
Item
Existing ceiling tariff
Proposed ceiling tariff
Charge for outgoing local voice call
Re. 1.00 per minute
Re. 0.65 per minute
Charge for outgoing long distance (inter-circle) voice call
Rs. 1.50 per minute
Re. 1.00 per minute
Charge for incoming voice call
Re. 0.75 per minute
Re. 0.45 per minute
Charge for outgoing local Short Message Services (SMS)
Re. 1.00 per SMS
Re. 0.20 per SMS
Charge for outgoing  long distance (inter-circle) Short Message Services (SMS)
Rs. 1.50 per SMS
Re. 0.25 per SMS
The explanatory note to the draft Amendment to the Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999 may be referred to for details on the objects and reasons.

The above draft Amendment Order has been placed on TRAI’s website www.trai.gov.in. The Authority would notify the Amendment Order after considering the views of the stakeholders and would make changes, as may be considered necessary. Stakeholders are requested to offer their comments preferably in electronic form to Shri Manish Sinha, Advisor (F&EA)-I, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Mahanagar Doorsanchar Bhawan, Jawahar Lal Nehru Marg, New Delhi – 110002 (Tel. No: 011-23230752, Fax No: 011-23236650; E-mail: manishsinha@trai.gov.in) latest by 13.03.2015.

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