By SUNIL Sonkar

NEW DELHI, India: Airtel on Friday slashed 60 per cent rates in its roaming tariff and has opened a new front in the ongoing price war.

Bharti Airtel is India’s largest telecom firm. According to its new tariff plan, roaming rates to cost only 60 paise per minute for calls within its network and just 80 paise per minute for calls to other networks.

The second largest cellular operator of the country, Reliance Communications, is already in the price war. It is offering a roaming rate of only 50 paise per minute for all its customers on all networks, which is much lower than Airtel’s new plan.

It is expected that other GSM operators such as Vodafone Essar, BSNL and Idea Cellular may also launch new billing plans within few days offering lower roaming rates.

President for mobile services of Bharti Airtel, Atul Bindal said that this new tariff plan is an attempt to join the price war scenario that is prevailing in the industry at present.

Bharti said, “Our primary aim is to bring the advantage of our network to our customers. Recent research has shown that customers need benefits while travelling and are not satisfied with just local calling benefits and our network is uniquely positioned to offer similar benefits on roaming all across the country.”