The government is considering the merger of the 22 telecom circles in the country into either a single service area or four separate zones to enable subscribers to move freely across states without paying extra charges for roaming. As per the recommendations of a core team of the Telecom Ministry,"There could be either one service area covering the entire country,or there could be four zones each covering a particular region." The core team was constituted by the Department of Telecom to give recommendations on strategic issues related to licensing matters. In its draft report,the team recommended that "there should be an option to merge certain service areas." Roaming services allow cellphone users to continuously make and receive calls while travelling outside the geographical constraints of their home network by using a visited network. Carriers charge a higher rate for roaming. Fees for roaming are not standard and differ from operator to operator. The draft note said that,"There are roaming issues attached to 22 service areas. Keeping in view the development of technologies for catering to more traffic,there should be an option to merge certain service areas,making a bigger service area." If implemented,the mobile users will not have to shell extra money when they travel from one state to other.
