NEW DELHI: Your STD and roaming bills will soon see a major reduction with telecom regulator Trai slashing a key rate charged on calls made outside the home network.

The relief comes a day after Trai had paved the way for a cut in local mobile as well as landline tariffs by reducing the charge companies pay to terminate calls on competing networks.

Issuing an amendment to the Telecommunication Inter-connection Usage Charges Regulations, Trai issued a new order that reduces the per-minute ceiling for carriage of inter-state calls from 65 paise per minute to 35 paise per minute.

“This would result in STD calls getting cheaper by a similar degree as carriage charge is the only additional cost that is levied on STD conversations on mobile when compared to a local call,” Arvind Kumar, adviser at Trai, told TOI here.

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Operators such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications have to route STD calls through national long-distance (NLD) operators who charge the carriage fee. While some of them use their own NLD services, others ride on the network provided by different operators.

The ceiling of 65 paise per minute had not been revised over the last nine years after last being fixed in 2006. Trai said that there was a case for a major reduction as STD traffic has increased manifold and efficiencies have been achieved in network architecture. “Associated costs have reduced substantially over time,” Trai said, pointing out that new telecom service providers have also entered the NLD segment.

“NLD traffic has increased significantly. The increase in traffic and the resultant lowering of costs cannot be ignored.”

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Sources said that the reduction in carriage charges will also lead to a reduction in roaming rates. “There is a ceiling of 75 paise per minute on roaming, which comprises the prevalent carriage charge as well as 10 paise roaming cost. With the reduction in carriage charge, a reduction will also happen in roaming now,” the sources said.

When contacted, most of the operators said that they are studying the new regulation. “Any change in tariffs will happen only after we have made a detailed analysis,” an official with a top operator said, requesting anonymity.

Trai said that it will review carriage charges every two years from now on and fixed the next review in the financial year 2017-18.