From next year, there is no burden of charges while on roaming as per latest announcement made by Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal today.
Postponing the NTP 2012 proposal, Sibal told the media on event of India Internet Governance Conference, “From next year. Our secretary has told you that it will be free from next year.”
Meanwhile, it indicating that if roaming charges will on free, then it would also hike tariff charges as the move of from regional to national calling patterns, no one price policy to follow and adjust as per consumers.
As per National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2012 proposal which was approved in May, mobile phone subscribers will not have to suffer from roaming charges as it will allow them to use same number for calls across the nation without paying extra charges.
“We are first going to attend to all issues linked to auction. The moment NIA is issued this week, we will focus on UL. After details of full UL are worked out, the modalities for free roaming will follow,” he said.
Telecom Secretary R Chandrashekhar confirmed that DoT is right now working on the Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for spectrum auction will be issued on September 28. After that it will work on unified licence (UL) guidelines, the ‘one nation-free roaming’ policy which will take more time.
