Telecom cos not keen on making roaming free

New Delhi: Even as the government is pushing to make roaming free from the first  half of this year, telecom operators are not too keen on it as they fear loss of revenue.
“Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has always advocated that tariffs should be under forbearance and should not be  driven or dictated by regulatory and policy interventions. In spite of inflation, tariffs for telecom services including tariffs for roaming have fallen over the years driven by market forces,” said COAI in a communication to Trai, which has come out  with a pre-consultation paper on review of tariff for national roaming. COAI said that  mobile operators get around 9 per cent of their revenues from roaming charges and with  the introduction of free roaming this revenue stream will be hit.
Tata Teleservices said that doing away with the roaming tariffs could have a serious impact on the already dwindling revenue streams of operators.
“If the tariff for  roaming is done away with then there will be a very high negative impact on those operators who have not been given their due spectrum for the whole circle. In our  case, we have not be­en so far allotted the start up GSM spectrum in Delhi and 39 districts spread over 9 circles,” said TataTele.

Source : http://www.deccanchronicle.com/

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