Airtel, along with other GSM vendors, have increased incoming roaming rates to an eyebrow-raising Rs 6.50 a minute. Plans seem to be afoot to raise inter-city SMS rates to Rs 2 a pop too. It’ll be very interesting to see if the very price-sensitive Indian market reacts with decreased use. Considering that trasmitting an SMS inter-city doesn’t cost all that much more over an SMS’ base transmission cost, it looks like the GSM telcos have decided to get into bottom-line-fattening mode after much bleeding over the long-distance wars. And raising roaming rates is a no-brainer, considering that Reliance can’t offer it yet. (I wonder how much BSNL’s roaming service costs?)