Roaming cheaper than local calls - It only happens in India

Over the weekend I was thinking, the type of choices consumers face in this maze of telecom price plan.

I found that calling landline within the circle (for a plan) is costly, when compared to the same user going out of circle and making a local landline call in that circle using roaming service.

To give an example, SPICE Telecom in karnataka has a Plan called 'Spice Uth Extra' (http://www.spicetele.com/karnataka/PD_uthextraTariff.php). It has local landline calling rate of Rs. 1.69 per minute. However the same subscriber / customer can go to TamilNadu / Goa / Delhi / anywhere outside Karnataka and call land lines in that circle at Rs. 1.40 per minute (http://www.spicetele.com/karnataka/national_prepaid_roaming.php).

Does this not sound funny?

In the case of local calling within the circle at the max only two telco's are involved viz. mobile provider and the called landline provider.

Where as in the case of roaming, it could involve max of three telco's viz. roaming service provider, customer's service provider and called telco. With three people to share the revenue, should that not be costly?

I am sure that Telco's may have their own data mining and marketing strategist's that plan out such tariff plans, however for the poor consumers its a lot of effort to select a plan that fits him / her