On 27th February 2017, Bharti Airtel announced that there will be no roaming charges on its network. In a statement on Monday, it said that all incoming calls and messages will be free on airtel network and no premium will be charged for outgoing calls also across all over India. And it will be started from 1st April 2017. The interesting part is that the date coincides with the date from which Reliance Jio will start charging its subscribers.
“The whole India will now be like a local network for our customers, after the death of national roaming.” Said, MD & CEO Bharti Airtel, Gopal Vittal. The company has also simplified the international roaming for their customers. From 1st April an Airtel customer who travels abroad without buying any international pack will also get the benefits the scheme. He/ she will be charged with an amount equal to the value of the lowest international pack. The company said, “There are still several customers failing to choose roaming packs and suffering bill shocks because of the steep roaming charges on international networks”.
It also said, “All our customers will be protected from the bill shock, starting from 1st April 2017, through the automatic adjustment that is equal to the amount of that particular country’s daily pack, if they don’t purchase any international roaming pack”. “This will allow our customers to use their devices abroad without any fear of bill shock.
Airtel has already launched a number of innovative international roaming packs for all major countries across the globe. These packs are of various options of 1 day, 10 days, and 30 days and benefits including free incoming calls and messages, talk times and texts both to India and the local country as well as dollops of internet data to stay online.
The telco said that it has received an overwhelming response from their customers. Chairman of Bharti Airtel, Sunil Bharti Mittal said “In Airtel, we are changing the plans and schemes of international roaming, which will allow our customers to carry their number to every corner of the globe. As an industry, all operators across the world need to collaborate to minimize the cost barrier for roaming”.
Ninety-nine percent Data charges and ninety percent call charges have been reduced for Airtel. Call charges are as low as Rs3/minute and data charges are as low as Rs3/ MB across popular roaming destinations. When a customer is travelling to the United States without an international pack and hits the threshold of Rs 649 (US pack for one day), he/she will be automatically moved to the one-day pack with free incoming calls and SMS, 100 minutes local country outgoing, 300MB data to stay online and other benefits.
It is sufficient enough to stay in the competitive market for Bharti Airtel, what it has done for its customer. But it’s the time to see what other tele-company will do to compete with reliance Jio.
