Bharti Airtel has come up with international SIM cards targeted towards international travelers enabling them to reduce roaming expenses.

The cards are named as ‘Airtel World SIM’ and promise to reduce incoming calls while on roaming by 90% and for outgoing calls while on roaming by 66%.

The SIM is priced Rs 500 and a typical one minute call from USA to India while on roaming will be Rs 41 while incoming calls will be Rs 10 per minute.

The new SIM will come up with a new number. However Airtel will link that to local number through forwarding facility. Thus effectively the subscriber will not have to hand out new number to contacts.

Airtel’s move is likely to kill the business model of companies such as Matrix which addressed the demand for reduced roaming tariffs till now.