Vodafone's Rs 5 pre-paid roaming plan now available

Telecom providers have been making a lot of changes to the plans available to subscribers over the last few days. Earlier, all the major providers like Vodafone, Airtel and Idea were seen slashing their 2G rates in certain circles. Now, companies have been launching new roaming packs for subscribers on the go.

While Airtel and Idea have already put new roaming packs in place, Vodafone has now followed their example, announcing a new roaming pack that will let users answer incoming calls in different states of India, free of charge. Like the plan Airtel has in place, Vodafone is also going to introduce a Rs 5 plan, which will apply to all received calls for an entire day.

The Rs 5 Special Tariff Voucher (STV) will only be applicable for pre-paid customers and will be valid for a time period of 24 hours. To activate this plan, users have to dial *444*500# to do the needful.

Vodafone announces new Rs 5 roaming plan for pre-paid users…

The outgoing call cost will also change, as users of this daily plan will be spending 1.5 paisa per second while on national roaming. Another plan for pre-paid users comes at a slightly higher cost. For Rs 71, users can activate a plan that will offer free incoming calls for an entire month. Post-paid Vodafone users have also been taken into account, with the company introducing monthly schemes, starting at Rs 75, to receive calls when they are away from their home and don’t want to spend anything extra on roaming.

Vodafone has also initiated its new Roaming Tariff Plan (RTP), which starts at Rs 196 for pre-paid connections and at Rs 149 for post-paid numbers.  An important point to take into consideration is that the prices for both the RTP and the roaming plans may change according to the state. However, the basic plan should give a discount on incoming call rates.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has said that it will not be possible to completely slash incoming call charges while roaming, according to sources . However, the board has cut down these rates considerably. Thus, the calling rates have come down by 25 percent while local SMS rates have seen a drop of 33 percent as well. TRAI has also asked all mobile operators to look into introducing packs and recharge coupons for free incoming. The new Vodafone STVs are now available for subscribers roaming in the country.