TRAI rescues international roaming subscribers

Providing much relief to international roaming subscribers, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday asked operators to provide a facility that would discourage unwanted calls during roaming.

Trai has asked the operators to provide a ring back tone facility to subscribers who avail international roaming and report compliance within 15 days.

This facility will allow display of a message such as “I am on international roaming” to the caller. With this arrangement, the calling subscriber may be discouraged to proceed with the call to the international roaming subscriber unless it is of an urgent nature, a Trai statement said.

Trai said that this was necessary as during international roaming the subscribers generally do not receive the caller line identification (CLI) on incoming calls, which makes it difficult for them to identify and choose the calls.

The problem has gained severity due to increased number of telemarketing calls. The high international roaming charges are an unwanted burden on customers.

This facility is easy to implement and the control of switching ‘on’ and ‘off’ will be with the roaming subscriber. It would also prevent any breach of privacy and the subscriber’s permission is not required for implemention.

The service providers are required to inform their subscribers of such a facility, Trai said.