TRAI, on Friday released a draft amendment to the Telecommunication Tariff Order, 1999 for comments of the stakeholders. Through the Amendment Order, the Authority intends to reduce the ceiling tariffs for national roaming services.
 
TRAI proposes to reduce the mobile roaming call and SMS rates by around 35 percent and 80 percent respectively.
 
After detailed examination, the Authority intends to reduce the ceiling tariffs for national roaming services as per the table given below:
 
National roaming service is the facility provided to a subscriber to avail services subscribed in its home network, while travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network. As per the existing framework for telecom access services, the country has been divided into 22 licensed service areas. Licenses are issued separately for each licensed service area. When a subscriber avails mobile services outside his home network, within the country, national roaming becomes applicable.

 
 
Tariffs for national roaming services were last revised in 2013 through the Telecommunications Tariff Order (55th Amendment), 2013 dated 17.06.2013. While formulating the revised tariff regime for national roaming, TRAI had indicated that the new tariff regime shall be subject to review after a year.