Airtel, the Indian telco has heavily slashed their International subscriber dialing (ISD) calling rates to Nepal. The cost of the call to Nepal has been decreased by 40 percent for their prepaid users.

Now the call rate to Nepal is INR 7.99 per minute which was INR 13 before. The percentage discount on the call rate is near to 40 percent.

Bharti Airtel has also slashed their international call rates to Bangladesh. Where they made a huge 75 percent cut from INR 12 to INR 2.99. Airtel has issued a press release to announce the ISD call rate discount.

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“These new calling rates will further simplify tariffs and eliminate the need for special ISD packs for making calls to these neighboring countries. Airtel retail and business customers will benefit immensely from these reduced rates and we are confident this will further drive the consumption of minutes on these routes,” Ajai Puri, COO at Bharti Airtel said.

Why call rates from India to Nepal is high?

The call rates from India to Nepal is still high if we compare it to that from Nepal to India. Five years back, Indian PM Narendra Modi announced to reduce the call rate to Nepal while addressing Nepal’s Parliament. They had also formed a committee to study the call rates and find the measures to drop it. Years passed by, but the solution to the huge call rate from India to Nepal has not solved yet.

For this matter, Indian telcos blamed the Nepali side for the huge termination rate that makes the call rate expensive from India to Nepal. As the termination rates are quite confidential for their business plan, we cannot do the straight comparison.

As huge Nepalese reside in India, the call rate reduction would have benefitted the people for their regular communication from the ISD calls instead of the OTT calls (like Viber, messenger, WhatsApp). It is a win-win for both side operators and the people. Apart from that, the affordable call rate will also strengthen socio-economic cooperation between these nations and people.