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.
