Roaming charges are those charges when paid by mobile users while travelling within the country. These charges are applied on both incoming as well as outgoing calls and other uses which includes GPRS, Messages, etc. Now the Communications Ministry has decided to put away these charges that are paid by mobile users while travelling within India from 2013.
This ‘One Nation Free Roaming’ scheme was announced by Mr.Kapil Sibal, Honorable Telecom Minister early in this year. In the month of May this year, the Union Cabinet has approved the National Telecom Policy – 2012. This policy mainly aims doing away with roaming charges and introducing a Pan-India service which shall be a Mobile Permit (Unified Licence) for mobile phone firms that shall enable them to offer all communication services.
R.Chandrasekhar, Telecom Secretary, said “Our first priority is the upcoming spectrum auctions. At the same time, we are working on the Unified Licence (UL) and we want to finalize this by December. Once the UL regime is rolled out post December, concepts like ‘One nation-free roaming’ that is part of it will be introduced. This will happen sometime next year (2013). At this stage it will be impossible to specify the exact time frame”.
This Consumer-Centric move shall bring down the mobile bills of travelers who frequently travel all around the country.
