It suddenly feels like revisiting the early years of this decade when we had all the new and upcoming cellular network operators clamoring over one another in providing the cheapest call rates. Started in 1999, Aircel broke into the tough market in Tamil Nadu by offering free SMS for the very first time. Ever since we have seen so many marketing campaigns by the operators to try and nibble away every possible fraction of the market shares.
Just at a time, when we thought that customer acquisition through price wars was about to take a backseat in favor of offering value adding services for mobile phones, we rather see a possible resurgence of the same. This time, it is the Docomo effect! Taking a cue from their relatively successful pay-as-you-use pricing strategy, Aircel has announced the launch of their new prepaid tariff structure where the costs are calculated on a per-second basis. This is currently only for its subscribers in the Kolkata circle.
Here are the details of the new structure:
Local Calls – 1p/second (all networks)
STD calls – 1p/second (for the first 500 Minutes) beyond which the charges would be 2 p/second in that month)
SMS Charges:
Local – Re.1
National – Rs 1.20
International – Rs 5
Technically, a per-second or per-minute pricing does not alter the ARPU much. I am currently on a 30 paise-per-minute plan and I do not see myself speaking for less than 30 seconds on any call. But as it is in any promotional campaign, it is all in the packaging, and a cheap 1 paisa per-second plan should go down well with the consumers.
