As we all were waiting eagerly for the month of march when roaming charges used to be cut off but I'm very sad to let you know that still its not done yet and you have to pay the roaming charges till the month of October where ever you travel other then your state.
Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal
Confirmed that the free roaming facility will come into effect in October 2013 but did not specify the exact date and assured that the facility will be availed from that month onwards.
Earlier, the union cabinet had approved the National Telecom Policy (NTP) in 2012 under which the concept of "one nation, one rate" was introduced.So friends you need to wait till the month of October for no roaming charges... Hopefully it'll not postpone again.
According to the plan, various telecom users could enjoy free roaming by using their same phone numbers across the country under the new mobile number portability proposal.
The introduction of free roaming charges will remove the existing distinction between STD and local calls. Mobile phone users can also enjoy free incoming calls, and outgoing calls will be charged at local rates.
However, telecoms are against NTP's "one nation, one rate" policy claiming that it will adversely affect their margins badly. Roaming charges contribute roughly 10 percent of their revenues. They also said that the plan will lead to security threat and undesirable competition.
After the Union cabinet approved the NTP, a leading GSM operator said, "Currently, the roaming charges are borne only by those who avail of the roaming service. Operators would need to recover this loss in roaming revenues leading to tariff increase which will be equally borne by the non-roaming customer base. To create a new tariff equilibrium, the tariffs in some non-affluent parts of country will go up and in other parts will dropSource tech2