Vodafone Follows Airtel & Idea, Announces Free Incoming Calls On Roaming

First it was Airtel, then Idea and now Vodafone – Incoming Call rates on roaming are now being reduced across the board.

Vodafone has today announced launch of Special Tariff vouchers (STV) for its pre-paid customers that will allow them to enjoy free incoming while on national roaming at Rs. 5 per day. The call rates for outgoing calls will remain the same at 1.5 paise per second. Vodafone’s monthly plan priced at Rs 71 for Prepaid customers and Rs. 75 for post paid customers, which will entitle them to free incoming calls on roaming.

Apart from the free plans, Vodafone has introduced 2 new roaming tariff plans for both their pre-paid and post paid customers called Roaming Tariff Plan (RTP) and Roaming Tariff Plan Free (RTP FR) that offers reduced rates on incoming calls while roaming. These plans start from Rs. 196 for prepaid customers and Rs. 149 for postpaid customers and vary slightly from state to state.

To activate this plan, Vodafone customers will have to simply dial *444*500# from their mobile handsets.

Vodafone plans are a near replica of what Airtel announced a couple of days. They also had announced free incoming calls on roaming for Rs. 5 a day plan. However, unlike Airtel, Vodafone have kept the incoming SMSes free!

Idea on the other launched slightly different voucher based plans. One plan priced at around Rs 240 that will offer free incoming on roaming (while keeping local, STD, ISD and SMS rates at par with the home circle). Second plan priced at Rs. 40 will offer discounted rate 75 paise per minute for incoming calls while roaming.

These new rates have come to effect due to the TRAI directive that was issued in June to make incoming calls more affordable while mobile subscribers are out of their home circle.

Interestingly, Aircel had announced “One Nation, One Rate” plan back in February 2013, and became the first telecom operator in India to offer uniform rates across India, be it local or roaming.