Airtel announced that no incremental roaming charges would be applicable for its customers when travelling within India, effective 1 April 2017. As per TRAI data, roaming contributed 4.6% to industry ARPU as of Sept 2016.
Jio's announced tariff plans (applicable from April) do not n have any roaming charges, and we view Bharti?s announcement today as a customer-retention strategy by the company. We believe other large telcos like Vodafone and Idea likely will soon do away with roaming charges on their respective networks as well.
Blended outgoing tariff on roaming (local + STD) at Rs0.96 is double the outgoing tariff of Rs0.48 while in home service area. Thus, revenues from outgoing calls while roaming, which comprise 2.9% of industry revenues, are likely to be halved. On incoming calls, current tariffs are Rs0.45/min, in addition to a Rs0.14 termination charge.
Airtel's Roaming Tariffs was nothing short of a loot and is too late to retain consumers as most of them will shift to Jio for "Mobile Broadband Services" either in Home Area or Roaming.
