Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd on Thursday announced international roaming on its cellphone services and slashed SMS charges for its post-paid cellular subscribers to 40 paise per message from the existing 60 paise.

"BSNL will offer international roaming in 164 countries from February 1," company chairman and managing director V P Singh told a news conference.

The company announced free talk-time for its post-paid cellular subscribers as part of which the subscriber of Plan 325 will get a free talk-time value of Rs 75 per month and customers of Plan 525 will get free talk-time value of Rs 150 per month.

The free talk-time value for the post-paid subscribers as also the reduced SMS charges will be effective from February 1, 2004.

The SMS tariff for BSNL's pre-paid subscribers will remain unchanged.

Sinha said BSNL will introduce two new lower denomination recharge coupons from February 15. The lowest denomination recharge coupon of Rs 70 will have a talk-time of Rs 38 and validity of 7 days. The Rs 150 recharge coupon will have a talk-time of Rs 85 and a validity of 15 days.

BSNL has also revised tariffs for its wireless in-local-loop subscribers, which would be effective from March 1. As part of this, the rental for WLL, which was Rs 200 per month, has been brought at par with basic telephony rates of Rs 120, Rs 180 or Rs 250 per month depending on the exchange capacity.