From June 15, BSNL subscribers will not have to pay roaming charges. The service would be offered for a period of one year to begin with, and extended depending on the response.
The announcement comes ahead of the implementation of full mobile number portability (MNP), which telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said will be effective from July this year.
BSNL currently has a mobile subscriber base of 77.2 million.
“Although there could be slight reduction in revenue on account of free incoming calls during roaming, we expect to gain first-mover advantage and anticipate offsetting this amount by arresting churnout/porting out and acquiring new customers,” BSNL chairman and MD Anupam Shrivastava said.
BSNL’s revenues grew by 2.1% in 2014-15, reversing the trend of negative growth in previous years, Prasad said.
Rolling out the achievements of the NDA government in telecom, IT and postal sectors, Prasad said he has received the report of net neutrality prepared by an internal committee of the department of telecommunications.
“I have got the report and will post it online soon. I have asked the telecom secretary to send it to the telecom regulator, so they can also have a look at it. We will wait for the Trai report and then take a final decision,” Prasad said.
{{/usCountry}}“I have got the report and will post it online soon. I have asked the telecom secretary to send it to the telecom regulator, so they can also have a look at it. We will wait for the Trai report and then take a final decision,” Prasad said.
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