Idea Cellular frees incoming roaming from tariffs

Idea Cellular, an Aditya Birla group company, has made incoming free for its domestic roaming subscribers, effective April 1. The telecom company, which is the third-largest in the country, has a subscriber base of about 200 million.

Further, the company has announced a range of International Roaming (IR) value packs with unlimited incoming calls and bundled outgoing voice calls, SMS & data.

The free incoming calls while on roaming would be available across the company's 2G, 3G and 4G network across 400,000 towns and villages in the country. The free incoming calls are also available for pre-and post-paid customers.

Idea customers will be able to make outgoing calls, SMS freely at affordable rates while roaming in India. Mobile data tariffs and data pack benefits of home circle will be available while roaming anywhere in India, without any extra charge.

For global travellers, Idea offers a wide choice of IR packs giving free bundled usage of up to 400 outgoing minutes, 100 SMS per day, large data volume and unlimited incoming calls.

These international roaming packs also come bundled with free 1GB, 2GB, 3GB data and overage charges for Rs3 per MB to avoid bill shock to travelling customers. Customers can chose 10-day pack for short leisure travel or 30 day packs for continuous business trips or long stay.

The company has done extensive study of customer's travel destinations, usage patterns and bill shock complaints to design a new range of value packs for handpicked destinations across Europe (15 countries), Asia (9 countries), America (USA + Canada), UK (UK + Ireland) and Middle East (UAE).

The packs start at Rs1,199 for 10 days validity and go up to Rs5,999 for 30 days validity, giving up to 85 per cent savings on IR charges.

''Backed by a pan-India mobile GSM & wireless broadband network with coverage spanning 400,000 towns and villages, Idea is now set to enable over 200 million customers to use their mobile phones freely, without having to worry about roaming charges, while they travel anywhere in the country. While incoming calls will be free, customers will also be able to enjoy Outgoing calls, SMS and Data services at affordable rates, starting 1st April,'' said Sashi Shankar, chief marketing officer, Idea Cellular.

''The IR packs are designed keeping in mind the travel trends of Indians going abroad, as well as their wireless data usage requirements, whether travelling for work or leisure,'' added Shankar.