Airtel Announces 'War on Roaming' With Free Incoming Calls, No Outgoing Premium

Bharti Airtel on Monday announced revisions to its domestic and international roaming charges. With the new announcement, Airtel will stop charging for incoming calls while roaming across India. Additionally, the company says that it will stop asking for premium charges on outgoing calls while roaming. For international roaming starting April 1 2017, the company says it will offer customers protection from bill shocks.

Airtel said that call charges have been reduced by up to 90 percent to as low as Rs. 3 per minute on international roaming while data charges by up to 99 percent to Rs. 3 per MB across popular roaming destinations.

The company in a press statement announcing new roaming revisions calls it "Death of National Roaming" where it will offer free incoming calls and SMS. Airtel also claims no bill shocks while roaming overseas where the company will start automatically adjusting daily billing to the price of basic one day pack even for customers who don't buy a roaming pack.

The telecom company further talking how the new international roaming pricing works explains that if a customer is travelling to the USA without a roaming pack and hits the threshold of Rs, 649, which is also the price of the one day pack for the USA, the customer will be automatically moved to the one day pack with free incoming calls/SMS, 100 India and local country outgoing minutes, 300 MB data and other benefits. Similarly, customers traveling to Singapore will be moved to one day pack when they touch Rs. 499.

Commenting on the announcement, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Airtel said, "At Airtel, we are changing the international roaming paradigm, which will allow our customers to take their number to every corner of the world. As an industry, operators across the world must collaborate to remove the cost barrier to roaming and offer customers the convenience of staying connected without the fear of exorbitant bill charges."