Hutch Roaming Sans Rentals

Hutch has announced national roaming without monthly rentals. Hutch has also announced a drop in national roaming rates by up to 56 percent. Now users will also not pay any security deposit for national roaming.

Hutch users will now pay only Rs 1.75 for incoming calls, which will save costs between 54 to 56 percent, depending on the roaming distance. Outgoing local calls will be Rs 1.40 per minute, while STD calls will cost Rs 2.40 per minute. There will be no change in cost for ISD rates and SMS or GPRS usage.

Commenting on the slash in tariffs, Samuel Selvakumar, Operations Director, Hutch, said, "The drop in roaming tariffs and abolition of monthly rentals on roaming service is uniform across all operators, and is in line with the recent guidelines issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. While TRAI had initiated various rate drops in the 'local calls' segment, this is the first initiative by them in the long distance calls segment. This was introduced by TRAI with a view to providing customers lower call rates, and was a decision taken in conjunction with representatives of COAI and AUSPI organizations."

Reportedly, TRAI has said that the new tariffs; effective from Feb15, 2007, would be applicable for the dominant GSM network as well as the CDMA platform, and the new charges would cut roaming tariffs by 22 to 56 percent.

Selvakumar said, "TRAI has in the recent past introduced significant developments, which have brought down cost of serving the customer. Constant innovation, new and evolving technologies have brought about drop in costs, and we have been keen to pass this on to customers."

"We in fact have a backend team that constantly analyses usage and advises customers proactively on 'toppings' viz SMS packs, STD packs for high end SMS users, or STD users, as applicable. We also advise customers on new tariff plans, and how to subscribe to these plans basis their usage."

source: Techtree