Idea Cellular has joined an alliance of five GSM mobile operators in the Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for 34 per cent of the total industry's outbound roaming traffic, to tap each others' users by offering seamless roaming connectivity.
Idea, the sixth largest mobile operator in the country with 17 million customers, has joined the Asia Mobility Initiative (AMI) alliance in which Celcom (Malaysia), MobileOne (Sinagpore), Excelcombindo (Indonesia), Telstra (Australia) and DTAC (Thaliland) are other partners.
The No 1 cellular player in the country, Bharti Airtel, has already formed such an alliance, Bridge Mobile Alliance, in the region. It has 11 members at present. Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), SingTel Mobile (Singapore), SingTel Optus (Australia), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia) are its members. Ericsson, ZTE and Motorola are part of this alliance.
In AMI, these five operators have a combined subscriber base of 58 million. The alliance enables their customers to enjoy seamless mobile services when roaming on Asia Mobility Initiative member networks.
However, being a part of this alliance does not bring any reduction in roaming rates.
Idea Cellular MD Sanjiv Aga did not commit any reduction in roaming rates per se following this alliance, saying the Indian roaming rates are already low and this alliance is for better service and to be always connected on roaming. He added that the company is testing networks to offer outbound roaming to pre-paid customers.
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Source: ET
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