Usha Martin'S Intl Roaming Facility Soon

Usha Martin Telekom Ltd (UMTL), cellular services operator for Calcutta, is set to offer international automatic roaming facility in a week's time following the department of telecommunications (DoT) clearance on Friday.

"We have been conducting trial runs and will start operations within a week," said Akshay Kumar, vice president (operations), Command. "Ours is the first company to receive in-principle clearance from the Reserve Bank of India," he said.

Command, one of the cellular services brand of Usha Martin Telekom, will introduce the international roaming facility in collaboration with Singapore Telecom.

The international autoroaming facility will enable Command subscribers to make international calls using a single number.

 

UMTL, which is a member of the Global Connect consortium, currently provides international plastic roaming facilities to nearly 56 GSM countries covering 90 networks using a single phone number.

Global Connect had entered into a strategic tie-up with Singapore Telecom (SingTel Mobile) last year for providing this plastic roaming facility.

Command will continue to provide the plastic roaming services once the international automatic roaming takes off.

However, there will be a tariff differential between international automatic roaming and plastic roaming but the fact that all incoming calls under plastic roaming are free will continue to attract customers, Command feels.

Some of the subscribers are expected to migrate from plastic roaming to international automatic roaming since tariffs under the latter is likely to be more competitive.

Nearly 10 per cent of Command subscribers are expected to avail the international automatic roaming facilities. On an average nearly 20 per cent of the subscribers in various networks across the globe regularly use international automatic roaming.