Vodafone follows Airtel and Idea to offer free roaming

Country's second largest telecom player Vodafone on Thursday launched Rs 5-per-day scheme offering free incoming calls, cheaper outgoing calls and SMS rates during national roaming. The announcement by Vodafone follows the launch of similar schemes by rivals Airtel and Idea as i had reported earlier here . "With these new roaming plans we aim to offer a hassle-free roaming experience to our customers," Vodafone India's Chief Commercial Officer Vivek Mathur said in a statement. The recent announcements from telecom companies have come following telecom regulator TRAI's direction last month to offer consumers option of discounted roaming plans. Videocon, however, had announced free incoming calls for its customers on roaming as early as March. Vodafone launched a Special Tariff Vouchers (STV), on lines of plan launched by Bharti Airtel, costing Rs 5 per day to its pre-paid customers to make their incoming calls free while they are on roaming. Vodafone will charge 1.5 paise per second for outgoing call under this daily plan. The company said it also offers a monthly plan which provides free incoming calls on roaming starting from Rs 71 for its pre-paid customers and Rs 75 for its post-paid customers. Airtel had launched similar monthly plan at a price of Rs 79. In addition to these plans, Vodafone also launched two new roaming plans, Roaming Tariff Plan (RTP) and Roaming Tariff Plan Free (RTP FR), for both pre-paid and post-paid customers. RTP users will get incoming calls at reduced rates while incoming calls will be free for subscribers of RTP FR."The price point for the RTP-FR for pre-paid customers starts from Rs 196 and varies by state and Rs 149 for its post-paid customers," the statement said.Idea Cellular has two vouchers in the price range of Rs 230 to Rs 240 and Rs 35 to Rs 40. Under the first set of vouchers, the company is offering free incoming call option.On the low-priced voucher, subscribers will get incoming calls for at reduced rate of 75 paise per minute. Both these vouchers, once purchased, will be offer the benefits for 6 months.