Over the last decade India has seen immense growth in almost all sectors. Among the most prominent of these, showing immense growth, is the Indian telecom sector that has followed a growth pattern far different from the rest of the world.
With Indians being price sensitive, and emotional, the slew of advertisements try to touch these aspects -- painting streets with promising adverts.
The recent price war in the telecom sector has adopted a new dimension. As one service provider starts slashing tariffs, its peers follow making better offers at better prices.
However, while making announcements on the excellent prices, the 'conditions' / mandatory information that follow are nowhere to be seen in these large campaigns as very few may note what the tiny little * carries with it.
The most recent announcement by a telecom provider offered call rates to be billed at 1p/sec. As a consumer, one is drawn to such great savings -- especially in times of inflating lifestyle expenses. But, a closer evaluation of the promise brings to light the cost differentiators.
The 1p/sec call was only for calls made within its own network numbers. The calls to numbers from other operators will be charged at 1.2p/sec which brings the cost to 72p/min.
An operator on the other hand, with a similar announcement of the 1p/sec tariff retains its roaming and SMS costs @ Re 1 and 1.50.
Going a step ahead of its competitor, this operator, with its announcement of the 1p/sec tariff, has not mentioned anywhere that in certain locations the 1p/sec tariff is available at a mandatory daily debit of 50p from the customer's account.
If compared with the tariffs offered for example by Reliance Mobile or by Tata DoCoMo, it is simple and clean.
There is no regulation by Tata on calls to other networks -- every local call is at 1p/sec. On the other hand, Reliance's offer under the 'Simply Reliance' banner gives consumers the benefit of a 'no-frills' charge -- everything is either at 1p/sec or at 50p/min.
Whether it is local -- to any number of any other operator, STD or roaming. Even their SMS charges are at a flat rate of 50p.
Industry analysts indicate that subscribers actually stand to lose if they migrate to the one-second billing plan without understanding their calling patterns and if their existing tariff plans are less than 60 paise per minute.
Consequent to the 1p/sec rush, we are witnessing a war over dropping tariff over roaming charges. Reliance is offering customers two options -- a 1p/sec tariff and a flat charge of 50p/min.
Both plans offer consumers the benefits of a 'no-frills' charge -- everything is either at 1p/sec or at 50p/min; and they have not separated roaming from their array of offerings. Tata DoCoMo's plans also have the same theme of a flat rate of 1paise per second.
An operator recently announced roaming charges at 60p and 80p.
"Although the roaming tariff has been reduced, it is still on a per minute pulse. A customer who has taken the new per second tariff will continue to pay 60p for incoming roaming and 80p for outgoing roaming calls on a per minute basis, while the customer enjoys 1p/sec and 1.2p/sec for calls made within and outside that operator's network," an industry watcher detailed.
