The Hindu : Business : 3 operators oblige

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 27, 2005

Business

Business

3 operators oblige

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Hours after the Union Communications and Information Technology Minister, Dayanidhi Maran, asked the private cellular operators to reduce their roaming charges at the Cellular Summit 2005 here on Tuesday, the three leading private cellular service providers — Airtel, Hutch and Idea — announced slashing of roaming airtime rates.

The new rates would be Rs.1.99 per minute against the current Rs. 3, a 33 per cent drop. While Airtel and Hutch will start charging as per new rates from May 1, Idea is yet to announce the date for implementing the reduced tariff.

Interestingly, the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited does not charge roaming airtime. At the summit, the Minister asked the private operators to reduce their "very high" roaming charges. Airtel is now present in all the 23 telecom circles, while Hutch is the second biggest GSM based cellular operator followed by Idea.

Announcing the new roaming tariffs, Sunil Mittal, Chairman and Group Managing Director, Bharti Tele-Ventures, said, "As a leading player of the cellular mobile industry, Airtel has always innovated and made telecom services available to the masses of India. This reduction in the roaming rate will expand the roaming community in India and help realise the vision of 200 million mobile subscribers by 2007.''Commenting on the tariff reduction, Viram Mehmi, CEO of Idea Cellular, said, "We have reduced our tariff as per the vision of Mr. Maran. This will also help increase mobile penetration and make it more affordable."

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