Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular announce free roaming plans

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The big fish of the Telecom market have announced their latest roaming plans as a relief to people from big roaming cut offs. Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular are the first ones to do so. They have announced their enhanced ‘free’ roaming plans for users nationwide. This would be a big revolution in the telecom market as roaming accounts for great revenue.
The announcement was made after few days of TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) allowing the operators to offer free roaming to subscribers nationwide via some Special Tariff Vouchers or combo packs. Well Bharti Airtel was the first one to launch a ‘free’ roaming plan for its prepaid customers. The operator is currently offering some Special Tariff Vouchers which include -

• Rs. 5/day plan for free incoming calls while all the outgoing calls are charged at 1.5p per second.
• A monthly pack of Rs. 79 where free incoming calls are valid for 30 days while outgoing calls are charged at 1.5p per second (in home circle and roaming)

Idea Cellular on other hand was quick enough to announce its own free roaming packs soon after the Bharti Airtel. Idea Cellular is offering two vouchers – one for Rs. 230-240 while other for Rs. 35-40. In the former, incoming during roaming is free while for latter it is 75p per minute for incoming calls. But the validity is for about 6 months after the recharge date.
While Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel have made their announcements, the announcements from Vodafone, Tat DoCoMo and Reliance Communication are yet to be confirmed. However, if Bharti and Idea are initializing free roaming plans, others would also have to introduce such plans in order to retain their customers. But in either ways, the user is going to get benefitted heavily with this relief from great cut-offs during roaming.