After Jio, Airtel scraps roaming charges
A week after Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd announced that there will not be any roaming charges on its network, India’s largest telecom company Bharti Airtel Ltd on Monday followed suit.
In a statement, it said that all incoming calls and messages will be free and no premium will be charged on outgoing calls while roaming across India from 1 April. There won’t be any data roaming charges either, the company said in a statement. Home data packs for customers will apply even while they roam across India.
“This marks the death of national roaming and the whole country will now be like a local network for our customers, who will not have to think twice before making or receiving calls or using data while travelling outside their home base,” said Gopal Vittal, chief executive, Bharti Airtel.
Starting 1 April, even customers on international roaming without a pack will be fully protected from “bill shocks” through an automatic adjustment that is equal to the daily pack for that particular country, the company said. “This means that the moment a customer’s billing reaches the price of a one-day pack for the country, he/she will be automatically moved to that pack. This will allow our customers to use their devices abroad without any fear.”
This essentially means that a customer travelling to the US without a pack hits the threshold of ₹649 (the price of the one-day pack for the US), he/she will automatically move to the one-day pack with free incoming calls/ SMSes, 100 India and local country outgoing minutes, 300 MB data and a host of other benefits. Similarly, a customer travelling to Singapore will move to the oneday pack the moment his/her usage hits the ₹499 mark. It is very similar to its predecessors. It will run the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. The 5.5-inch screen is the world’s first 4K HDR (2,160 x 3,840, high dynamic range) display in a smartphone. Sony will bundle 4K HDR content from Amazon. The 20-megapixel camera is claimed to be faster than even last year’s Xperia flagships. The only drawback could be the mirror-like finish on certain versions.