Airtel declares war on roaming; announces zero data roaming charges

India's largest telecommunications services provider Bharti Airtel on Monday announced radical changes in its value proposition for domestic and international roaming as the customers will now be able to carry their numbers across India and the world and stay connected all the time without having to worry about high call/data charges.

Under national roaming, the network will offer free incoming calls with no premium on outgoing calls along with no data roaming charges.

Starting from April 1 2017, Airtel customers can enjoy roaming within India with free incoming calls/SMS and there will be no premium on outgoing calls allowing them to speak freely wherever they are within the country.

Also, there will be no additional data charges on national roaming. Home

data packs for customers will apply even while they roam across India.

"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 traveling outside their home base. Airtel has again set the benchmark in delivering best in class value backed by a great network experience," said MD and CEO (India and South Asia) Bharti Airtel, Gopal Vittal.

The largest telecom network has also announced no bill shocks on International Roaming as it has already launched innovative and affordable International Roaming packs for all major countries across the world.

These packs come with convenient validity options of 1 day, 10 days, and 30

days and offer loads of benefits including free incoming calls/SMS, calling minutes and texts both to India and the local country as well as generous dollops of data to stay online.

These packs have received an overwhelming response from customers, shielding them from any bill shock and eliminating the need for a local country SIM.

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.

When a customer traveling to the USA without a pack hits the threshold of Rs. 649 (the price of the one day pack for USA), he or she will automatically move to the one day pack with free incoming calls/SMS, 100 India and local country outgoing minutes, 300 MB data and a host of other benefits.

Similarly, a customer traveling to Singapore will move to the one day pack the moment his/her usage hits the Rs. 499 mark.

"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," said chairman Bharti Airtel, Sunil Bharti Mittal.