Country’s top telecom service provider, Bharti Airtel has slashed roaming charges by 60 per cent, the move that can further aggravate the tariff war, benefitting customers, but bleeding telecom players. The development came as a move to retain customers who are being lured by other operators by offering attractive roaming rates.

The move, according to market analysts, would also encourage other telecom operators to follow the suit to retain their customer base. There could be a manifestation of tariff war in other areas such as SMS and value added services with the entry of new telecom operator across the highly potential and competitive telecom market of India.

Airtel slashed national roaming charges on its network to just 60 paise per minute as compared to Rs 1.50 earlier. It would charge customers only 60 paise for all incoming calls against Re 1 earlier.

Bharti Airtel President (Mobile Services), Atul Bindal said, “Recent research has shown that customers need benefits while travelling and are not satisfied with just local calling benefits.”

Tata DoCoMo and Reliance Communications are already offering national roaming at very nominal charges of 2 paise and flat 50 paise per minute respectively. However, Vodafone is yet to join the bandwagon.