BSNL to enter roaming pacts with rival telcos, to charge 52 paise a minute

BSNL has decided to share its network with private telecom service providers to enable their subscribers roaming facilities on the public sector telco's network. The public sector telecom fim's latest move will finally enable mobile subscribers seamless connectivity throughout the country.

So far, while private telcom serrvice providers have roaming agreements with each other, BSNL has not opened up its networks to for roaming arrangements with private sector service providers.

The decision was taken by BSNL's management committee to open the BSNL networks to its private sector rivals.

Initially BSNL may sign short-term agreements with other network operators six months on a non-exclusive and experimental basis. BSNL is xpected to sign the first roaming agreement with new telecom operator Swan Telecom.

The committee has decided to levy roaming charge of 52 paise a minute per outgoing call.for the intra-circle roaming service seeking operators and review review the charge after an initial six months, which could later be raised or lowered  depending on the volume of business.

The incremental additional cost of of the upgradation of equipment to provide roaming will be borne by the seeker operators.

However, BSNL will only offer its idle capacity to generate additional revenue for itself.