Taking a half leaf from Airtel’s big announcement of ending all domestic roaming charges on voice calls, SMS and data usage. India’s third largest telecom operator Idea Cellular will make incoming calls free on national roaming. Starting 1st April 2017, Idea’s pan-India mobile subscribers can enjoy free incoming calls while on roaming anywhere in India. That’s the same day Airtel announced to end its national roaming charges.
In Airtel’s offer, the operator completely removed the incoming and outgoing charges for voice calls and SMS on roaming. Whereas Idea Cellular has only removed the charges for incoming calls while on domestic roaming. You still need to pay a small charge for outgoing voice calls and SMS on roaming.
“Effective April 1, 2017, Ideas 200 million customers will enjoy free incoming calls while roaming on company’s 2G, 3G and 4G network across 400,000 towns and villages in the country“ stated Idea Cellular in a statement. “Idea customers will be able to make outgoing calls, SMS freely at affordable rates while roaming anywhere in India”, the operator further added.
Idea free incoming calls on Roaming
- Starting 1st April 2017 all incoming calls will be free on domestic roaming.
- No extra charges levied for incoming voice calls while roaming anywhere in India.
- Ther still will be extra charges for outgoing calls and SMS while roaming anywhere in India.
- No extra charges for using 4G/3G/2G data while on domestic roaming.
- Applicable to both Prepaid and Postpaid subscribers pan-India.
As we said earlier, only incoming voice calls are becoming free while you are on domestic roaming. All outgoing calls and SMS are charged at affordable rates. In addition, if you have recharged for a 4G or 3G data pack then there won’t be any additional data charges while using it on national roaming. The data charges and benefits of your home telecom circle will be applicable across India.
Affordable Internal roaming Packs
If you are a frequent international traveller, Idea has also come up with special international roaming value packs. This value packs will come bundled with up to 400 minutes of outgoing calls, 100 SMS per day, data benefits and unlimited incoming calls. Also, the operator will only charge Rs 3 per MB for any extra data usage than your free quota.
The international roaming value packs are offered in 10-days or 30-days validity. The price for the packs starts at Rs 1,199 with minimum 10 days validity. If you are travelling to Asian countries then at Rs 2,499 you will get all the above benefits for 30 days. For Europe countries, it’s Rs 5,999 and also comes with 30 days validity. The operator also have launched special international roaming value packs for destinations across America (USA + Canada), UK (UK + Ireland) and Middle East (UAE).