Vodafone Offering Free Roaming To Users

At a time when calling and texting tariffs are on the rise even as telecom operators grapple with cost and limited customer acquisition issues, Vodafone, one of India’s largest telecom service providers has recently launched a scheme wherein users will get free talktime while on roaming networks.

This is how it will work: A user will be given three minutes of free talktime following 10 minutes of chargeable talk time. Strangely, however, there isn’t any special scheme by which users can get this scheme activated. It will instead be made applicable only to select customers for a select period of time. These lucky chosen customers will be made aware of the scheme through an SMS, informing them of the same.

While it might come across as a weird move at first sight, chances are that this is a pilot scheme that Vodafone might want to then universally role out to all its users.

Irrespective of whether this happens or not, at present, users will be charged at regular roaming rates of Rs 1 per minute for local calls and Rs 1.5 per minute for STD calls under this offer. Incoming calls will be charged at standard 75 paisa per minute.

This scheme will however not affect the SMS tariffs and it will continue to be charge tar Rs 1 per outgoing SMS local and Rs 1.5 per outgoing SMS to STD number while roaming. ISD messages will be charged at standard Rs 5 per message and the character limit will be 160 characters for all SMS.