Idea cuts roaming incoming, SMS rates

Idea Cellular Ltd has offered lower incoming roaming rates and national SMS charges to its customers in the post-paid segment.

Now, Idea customers will be able to send local and national SMS at 30 paise per message and get a 50 per cent reduction in the incoming roaming rates in Gujarat.

The roaming rates on incoming calls have been reduced to Rs 2.99 from Rs 5.99 and would be applicable to all Idea subscribers for roaming to other circles of the region, the company said.

The new rates will be applicable from Monday. Recently, Idea had introduced tariff plans like Buzz99, Buzz249, Buzz499 (which offers 400 minutes of cell-to-cell talk time free) and pre-paid rates were at Rs 1.49 per minute.

Commenting on the announcement, Vikram Mehmi, CEO, Idea Cellular Ltd, said, "With the continuously increasing trend of mobile usage among our customers, we want to offer them the best value."

The company has recently achieved financial closure with a project cost of Rs 5,000 crore. Idea Cellular Ltd is a three-way equal joint venture between Tata, Birla and AT&T.

Hutch, the leading cellular service provider in Gujarat with over 7.50 lakh subscribers, had also announced a new tariff for its post-paid subscribers.

Reducing the rate of incoming calls while roaming in western and southern India, Hutch provided 2,000 free SMS for all new post-paid subscribers for a period of two months and has reduced the national SMS charge to Re 1.

Hutch's new tariff plans and SMS charges will be applicable for post-paid subscribers with effect from Monday.