About week after Bharti Airtel slashed its national long distance call rates and roaming charges, the second largest GSM operator in the country, Vodafone-Essar on Tuesday announced cuts in its STD tariff to Rs 1.30 per minute as against Airtel’s Rs 1.50 per minute. Vodafone slashed the roaming charges to Re 1 for all incoming and local outgoing calls matching Airtel’s roaming charges.

Last week Bharti Airtel Ltd had set the competition rolling by slashing the STD call rates by around 43% to Rs 1.50 per minute from Rs 2.65 per minute and the roaming charges by 43 % to Re 1 per minute from Rs 1. 75 per minute across all tariff plans. This followed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) decision to remove the access deficit charge component on domestic calls from April 1.

Vodafone?s new tariffs would come into effect from Tuesday, a company statement said. While on roaming, a subscriber can make an outgoing call (STD) at the rate of Rs 1.50 per minute. ?Vodafone has always endeavoured to deliver best value to its customers. The new reduction in tariffs reinforces our commitment to our customers,? Vodafone-Essar director -marketing and new business ? Harit Nagpal said.