Trai out to cut roaming charges

In a major relief to cellular subscribers, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday sought stakeholders’ opinion in bringing down the roaming charges by various measures, including fixing a ceiling tariff for services based on usage.

Trai has initiated a consultation process on review of ceiling tariffs for roaming services.

“The Authority proposes to revise the existing roaming tariff by fixing a ceiling tariff for roaming services based on usage. It means that there shall be no rental component for availing roaming services and there shall only be a composite roaming tariff on per minute basis,” the regulator said.

For the moment, though, it has only sought the industry’s views on its suggestion. The last date for submission of comments by stakeholders is December 14, 2006.

Currently, roaming charges are high for both domestic as well as international mobile customers. There is a monthly rental at Rs 100 (ceiling), national roaming airtime charges of Rs 3 per minute (ceiling), a 15% surcharge on airtime component (ceiling) and PSTN charges as applicable from time to time to the fixed network.

Tariffs for international roaming services are under forbearance.

“There is a growing impression among the subscribers of mobile services and other stakeholders that there is a strong case to revisit the roaming tariffs. The Authority studied the prevalent roaming tariffs in the market and has flagged the issue of inadequate competition for roaming services,” the regulator said.

Trai’s consultation paper to review the existing roaming tariffs was necessitated as tariff for roaming services in cellular telephony was fixed way back in 2002.

A number of significant developments have taken place since then, including the introduction of calling party pays (CPP) regime, fixation of cost-based interconnection usage charges (IUC), periodical review of the IUC regime, reduction in the applicable licence fee payable by the operators on the adjusted gross revenue and the explosive growth of subscriber base and the resultant growth in minutes of usage.

Keeping these factors in view, the Authority has raised several questions in the consultation paper like should Trai fix an usage based composite ceiling tariff for national roaming services for various types of calls, among others.

Alternatively, it wondered whether the Authority adopt the home pricing rule for all types of calls while roaming.

It also wondered whether there should be any surcharge on national roaming tariffs and whether outgoing SMS will attract any tariff while roaming other than the one applicable in the home network usage.