NEW DELHI: Lower roaming tariffs among the SAARC countries may soon become a reality. The telecom regulators of all SAARC countries—India, Sri Lan
ka, Nepal, Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Pakistan—will meet in Delhi next week where they will consider this issue. Also on the agenda is a plan to make it easier for telcos within SAARC countries to directly link their networks. At present, traffic between some of the SAARC countries are routed through some West Asian countries as telcos do not have direct connectivity links with each other.
TRAI sources said that while the issue would be discussed, the regulators of the SAARC countries did not have the mandate to enforce regulations on lower roaming rates across the region. Instead, the regulators will look at acting as facilitators between operators in the SAARC region and get telcos to sign mutual agreements to reduce international roaming rates.
This issue assumes importance because international roaming rates in the subcontinent are amongst the highest in the world. Put simply, it often costs more to avail international roaming while traveling within the SAARC countries, than in the US and the UK.
TRAI sources also added that the fibre links between telcos across these countries would be discussed. “The requests for fibre links from some of the operators have been pending for months and even years. We will try and address this issue to ensure better connectivity links between operators in this region,” explained a TRAI source.
In fact, TRAI has been making a call for lower roaming rates in this region for some time now. Last year, TRAI had sent a communiqué to the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) suggesting that the SAARC region replicate the European Union (EU) model where all member states were forced to slash international roaming rates. In May 2007, the European Parliament had imposed a cap on the roaming tariffs and said that these caps would be brought down further in 2008 and 2009. But so far, TRAI’s efforts to have a similar system here failed to make any serious headway.
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