New Delhi: India's top telecom operators Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have announced that they are reducing national roaming tariff, in keeping with telecom regulator Trai's lowering of the ceiling tariffs few days ago.

While Airtel has reduced outgoing local SMS price by up to 75%, inter-circle SMSs will now cost up to 74% less. Similarly incoming call rates have been slashed by up to 40%, and outgoing inter-circle call charges have been reduced by 23%.

Outgoing local calls will also cost up to 20% less.

Vodafone users will now pay 25 paise on roaming for a local text message in comparison to earlier charge of Re 1; and for STD texts, 38 paise from Rs 1.50 earlier in keeping with the new Trai guidelines, Vodafone India said in a statement.

Outgoing local and STD calls will now be 80 paise and Rs 1.15 paise per minute as compared to Re 1 and Rs 1.50, respectively.

Vodafone has also made receiving calls on roaming 40% cheaper, down from 75p/min to 45p/min.

Idea will now charge incoming calls at 45 paise/minute, which is a 40% drop, for roaming anywhere in India, the company said in a statement. Outgoing local call rates have also been cut by 20% and STD call rates by 23%.

Local SMS will now cost 25 paise and STD SMS 38 paise, while roaming nationally.

The revised tariff will come into effect from May 1 for all three telecom operators.

It may be recalled that Trai had earlier this month reduced the maximum or ceiling rate that a telecom operator can charge for STD calls on roaming to Rs 1.15 per minute from Rs 1.50.

Similarly, national SMS rate was reduced to 38 paise from Rs 1.5 per SMS.