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Air India will offer travel SIM cards to passengers for their overseas trips. EasyRoam, an Air India-branded travel SIM card that offers international roaming services, has been developed in partnership with Tata Communications. The ancillary product will be available for purchase as a physical SIM card as well as eSIM on a dedicated Air India-branded webpage, the airline said in a release on Thursday. With the card, passengers will be able to access voice and data services during international travel. Air India and Tata Communications are part of the Tata Group. Initially, the SIM card will be provided free of cost while roaming pack charges will apply. It will be available for 30 countries across North America, Europe (including the UK), Australia, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, the release said.
Broadband India Forum, an industry body that represents major tech firms like Meta, Google, and others, has questioned the legal validity of the government's SIM binding mandate, citing a senior counsel's opinion that termed the direction as "ultra vires the parent legislation" and "unconstitutional". In a letter dated February 23 to the Department of Telecom (DoT) secretary Amit Agrawal, BIF highlighted the legal opinion which concluded that the Telecommunications (Telecom Cyber Security) Amendment Rules, 2025, and recent directives regarding 'SIM binding' exceed the authority granted by the parent Telecommunications Act of 2023. The matter pertains to a direction issued by the central government in November that will ensure app-based communication services, the likes of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and others, are continuously linked to a user's active SIM card. In fact, Union Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, earlier this week, in a briefing, made it clear that the decision o