RCom, Tata Tele, Aircel in 3-way 3G roaming services pact

Three of the country's major telecom service providers, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Aircel have entered into a tripartite agreements to provide seamless 3G roaming services to their respective customers. 

RCom and Aircel have permits for 3G services in 13 out of 22 service areas while Tata Teleservices has permit in 9 circles.

This means, Reliance Communications' 11.1 million 3G customers can benefit from roaming in beyond 13 circles, where it operates 3G network.

At present, Reliance Communications, which competes with Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, etc has 3G presence in circles such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, North East, Jammu & Kashmir.

"We are delighted to be the first operator to offer 3G national roaming to our customers in partnership with other telecom firms having state-of-the-art 3G networks.

"These alliances will further consolidate RCom's position as the leading data operator in the country and will help the Company improve its post-paid and corporate customer market share," RCom's chief executive for consumer business Gurdeep Singh said in a statement.

Aircel has presence in 5 service areas - Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and UP East while TTSL has 3G network in circles such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana and UP west.

The partnership gives Aircel and Tata Teleservices access to most expensive service areas of Delhi and Mumbai where RCom has permits.

The 3G GSM partnership opens up a significant market opportunity for the three telecom service providers as all their 3G customers will now be able to access data services on a pan-India basis.