New Delhi, June 1
Telecom war on the roaming front resulted in a bonanza of new tariff for frequent travellers and outstationed students as state-owned BSNL, MTNL slashed their roaming charges, and Reliance and Tata followed closely with their own attractive schemes.

However, all new tariffs for roaming failed to match the former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran's promise of zero roaming charges.

State-run telecom operators said national roaming charges will be slashed to Re 1 for incoming calls and Re 0.40 for outgoing calls within either networks on a new post-paid plan of Rs 550 to be effective from June 3. Under the new plan with a monthly rental of Rs 550, the subscribers will get 300 minutes (five hours) of free talktime for receiving calls while on roaming.

After exhausting the free talktime, an additional Re 1 will be charged per minute. However, outgoing calls to networks outside the visiting state will be charged at Re 1.

Meanwhile, Reliance Communications announced its new India Roam Free plan 390, which offers 200 free minutes of incoming calls while roaming. Outgoing calls, even while roaming are charged at 40 paise per minute to local Reliance and all other calls at Re 1.

Similarly, on the India Roam Free plan 990 a subscriber gets a whopping 1,300 minutes of free roaming talktime, distributed over 900 minutes of incoming calls while roaming and 400 minutes of free local calling. A nominal charge of 50 paise for local calls and Re 1 for STD calls would be applicable for customers choosing this tariff plan.

Reliance also announced a significant cut of up to 50 per cent in ISD rates for calls to all regions, including a further reduction in the rates to US/ Canada and the Gulf. Reliance subscribers will be able to call landline users in the UK for as low as Rs 2.99 per minute now.

''We expect a significant jump in our traffic and volumes,'' BSNL CMD A K Sinha told reporters here.