New Delhi: Bharti Airtel has been charging mobile customers for roaming despite declaring a “war on roaming” earlier this year. The company, which had previously said it will discontinue charges from April this year, has been selling roaming plans to prepaid and postpaid customers.The country’s largest mobile company still charges customers on outgoing calls even when they have opted for free-calling plans. This happens when they step out of their ‘home circle’, or the city where they have taken the connection. This is contrary to the company’s previous announcement on abolishing roaming where it had said the “whole country will now be like a local network”. Airtel’s mobile app for customers, and also its website, are selling ‘national roaming benefit’ plans for pre and postpaid customers.When contacted, a spokesperson for Airtel declined to comment on the issue but said “all tariffs are published transparently on the website”.Under postpaid, the company has free-calling plans, but some of them start charging customers the moment they step out of their home circle. Customers have an option to opt for a non-roaming plan that allows free outgoing even outside the home circle. This, however, is priced at a premium.A senior official at regulator Trai said the ‘free-call’ plans “appear misleading”, especially when the company charges customers the moment they step out of their home circle. Asked whether the regulator will look into the issue, the official said, “Tariffs are generally under forbearance and we do not look into them, unless there is something wrong. We may look into this if the need arises.”Competition in the domestic telecom industry has become intense following the launch of services by Reliance Jio in September last year. Jio’s disruptive offers — such as lifetime free-calling across the country on all plans — has put severe pressure on older operators such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular to follow suit.Industry analysts said the free-calling offers of Airtel had been rolled out to counter Jio’s plans. Jio, however, gives unlimited free-calling across all its tariff plans.Jio’s launch had hit business fundamentals of the older operators sharply as a little over 70% of their revenues were flowing in from voice tariffs. The attack on voice charges -- after the entry of the new operator -- has crippled the revenues and profitability of companies, forcing them to offer competing plans to rein in the flight of customers.