Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel today said that that the company is changing the international roaming paradigm — by removing roaming charges in India and avoiding bill shocks to international roaming users.

“Mobile operators across the world must collaborate to remove the cost barrier to roaming and offer customers the convenience of staying connected without the fear of exorbitant bill charges,” Sunil Mittal said.

Airtel India

Airtel India announced free incoming calls during roaming; no premium on outgoing calls and no data roaming charges for its nearly 270 million customers. Airtel owns more than one fourth of India’s mobile subscribers.

Reliance Jio has already offered this to its existing 100 million 4G subscribers, who joined the free services during the ongoing promotion period.

From April 1, 2017, Airtel customers roaming within India will enjoy free incoming calls / SMS and there will be no premium on outgoing calls. There will also be no additional data charges on national roaming. Airtel will charge home data packs while they roam across India.

“This marks the death of national roaming and the whole country will now be like a local network for our customers, who will not have to think twice before making or receiving calls or using data while traveling outside their home base,” said Airtel India CEO Gopal Vittal.

No bill shocks on international roaming

Airtel will protect its wireless customers on international roaming from bill shocks through an automatic adjustment that is equal to the daily pack for that particular country.

The moment a customer’s billing reaches the price of a one day pack for the country, he/she will be automatically moved to that pack.

Airtel has reduced international roaming call charges by up to 90 percent to as low as Rs 3 / min and data charges by up to 99 percent to Rs 3 / MB across popular roaming destinations.

When a customer traveling to the USA without a pack hits the threshold of Rs 649 (the price of the one day pack for USA), he / she will automatically move to the one day pack with free incoming calls / SMS, 100 India and local country outgoing minutes, 300 MB data and a host of other benefits.

Similarly, a customer traveling to Singapore will move to the one day pack the moment his / her usage hits the Rs 499 mark.