Back in May 2012, the National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2012 was approved and according to the policy, roaming in India is to be abolished. And in September this year, Mr. Kapil Sibal said that there will be no roaming charges in India from 2013.
And today, if a report in ET is to be believed, then the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is likely to ask telecom operators to implement this ‘consumer-friendly’ move from March 2013.
As per an internal note which was obtained by ET and reviewed, the DoT has listed the abolition of roaming charges under the ‘key initiatives to be completed within the next three months’.
While this is a great news for mobile subscribers, operators are not quite happy with this decision as they feel that a large amount of the revenue (about 10%) that they generate through roaming charges will be hit, thus lowering their earnings.
This might result in the operators increasing the tariff which will hit them and also the end user badly. Security reasons have also been cited by the operators and they feel that the free-flow of SIM cards would start in the country which will not be great.
