India Broadband

Indian mobile service providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications have both announced their reduced roaming tariffs.

These two companies have also announced the scrapped rental rates for roaming services. These announcements are to meet the recently released guidelines issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India last month.

Bharti Airtel said that they have now slashed roaming charges by 56%. They have also now waived off the roaming rental of Rs 49 per month.

In addition, their local calls while roaming will be charged at Rs 1.40 per minute. STD calls would be charged at a fixed 2.40 per minute. Incoming calls on roaming would cost Rs 1.75 per minute.

Sanjay Kapoor, joint president (mobile services), Bharti Airtel added on these new announcements: “We now usher in an era of simplified roaming tariffs wherein all Airtel mobile users will benefit from our seamless network and have the opportunity to make calls while traveling anywhere in India.”

Reliance on the other hand has announced that they are reducing their roaming charges by up to 44% on its pre-paid connections. They have not been charging any roaming fees from their customers.

Indian mobile service providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications have both announced their reduced roaming tariffs.

These two companies have also announced the scrapped rental rates for roaming services. These announcements are to meet the recently released guidelines issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India last month.

Bharti Airtel said that they have now slashed roaming charges by 56%. They have also now waived off the roaming rental of Rs 49 per month.

In addition, their local calls while roaming will be charged at Rs 1.40 per minute. STD calls would be charged at a fixed 2.40 per minute. Incoming calls on roaming would cost Rs 1.75 per minute.

Sanjay Kapoor, joint president (mobile services), Bharti Airtel added on these new announcements: “We now usher in an era of simplified roaming tariffs wherein all Airtel mobile users will benefit from our seamless network and have the opportunity to make calls while traveling anywhere in India.”

Reliance on the other hand has announced that they are reducing their roaming charges by up to 44% on its pre-paid connections. They have not been charging any roaming fees from their customers.

Government owned telecom company MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) has now announced that they are slashing the national roaming rates with effect from 15th Feb’2007.

This announcement is to comply with the recent ruling of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The company said in a release that all local calls on roaming will be charged at Rs. 1.40 per minute from the existing Rs. 1.50 per minute. They would also be levying a 14% surcharge.

MTNL added that STD calls on roaming would cost Rs.2.40 per minute. Earlier they were charging a surcharge of 14%.

Incoming calls on roaming would cost the customer Rs. 1.75 per minute. This is down from Rs. 2.50 per minute. The company already does not charge any roaming charges from their customers.

Bharti Airtel is the largest private telephony company in the Indian market. They provide both landline and mobile services in addition to broadband services.

The company has said in a statement that its investments in the mobile phone market would reach four billion dollars in the two years ending 2008.

Most of these investments have been made in improving their network in countryside regions.

A company spokesperson said: “Bharti Airtel has invested about two billion dollars in the financial year 2006-2007 and plans a similar investment in 2007-2008.”

Bharti Airtel wants to improve their reach in the rural regions in India. The company is also asking the government to get BSNL and MTNL to “share its infrastructure with private operators.”

TRAI has some exciting news for the mobile phone users in the country. The regulatory body has announced that they are slashing the mobile roaming tariffs by up to 56 per cent.

They have also now scrapped the rental for roaming services. This would be good news for those customers who travel a lot within the country.

This new tariff order would be applicable from February 15. TRAI Chairman Nripendra Misra said in a statement that the new ruling would reduce roaming tariffs from 22 to 56 per cent as compared with the current market rates.

TRAI has also said that the incoming SMS would be free while roaming for the mobile users in the country.

They have also scrapped the 15 per cent on air-time while roaming and separate PSTN charge.

Misra added: “TRAI would closely monitor market developments on roaming and if perceptible competition evolves in the market, it would revisit the issue and even consider forbearing roaming tariffs.”

TRAI said that they had to come out with this ruling because the service providers in the country were not doing enough for their customers.

UK based mobile service provider Vodafone is likely to submit its bid for the stake of Hutchison in Indian company Hutch next month.

Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin said in a statement on their plans: “We will make a bid by the second week of February. We are doing due diligence.”

Vodafone said that they are currently studying the books of Hutch-Essar and they are very much interested in getting a share of this emerging market.

Sarin also has met Airtel’s head Sunil Mittal. Vodafone already holds a 9.9% stake in Bharti Airtel. Sunil Mittal has said in the past that he is ok with the idea of Vodafone selling their stake if they manage to buy Hutchison’s stake in Hutch.

Vodafone face serious competition in their quest of acquiring the stake in Hutch. Other interested parties are Reliance Communications, Maxis Communications and the Hinduja Group.

Aditya Birla’s Idea Cellular is one of the several smaller players in the Indian mobile market. The company is planning to issue an IPO.

The company has fixed the price band for its forthcoming initial public offer between Rs 65 and Rs 75 a share.

This share is likely to be listed on both National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Idea said that the float is being routed through a 100 per cent book-building, aggregating to Rs 2,125 crore. They would be opening up the issue on February 12.

Idea has also concluded a pre-IPO placement of Rs 375 crore to certain of its promoters, directors and certain high net worth individuals.

India has become one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. The country nearly doubled the number of mobile users last year and the numbers are not slowing down.

Sources reveal that the country saw addition of as many as 74 million new mobile telephone subscribers last year. Not surprising, India is attracting a lot of global mobile service providers including the UK based Vodafone.

The country had just around 75.94 million mobile users at the end of the year 2005. The number is now around 149.5 million subscribers at the end of December last year. These figures were revealed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi.

One of the main reasons for this growth is low rates for mobile communication in India. India boasts of some of the lowest tariff charges for mobile users in the world.

As a result, mobile service providers are focusing on increasing revenues through value added services. The GSM operators in the country have just announced that they would soon launch mobile instant messaging facilities on their networks.

Such services are necessary to attract more users to achieve the target of 500 million telephones, both fixed and wireless, by 2010 set by the Indian government.