Jun 04, 2003 08:32 PM
2227 Views
(Updated Jun 06, 2003 06:14 PM)
For the people going mobile it’s a real tough time to take a call as to which services to subscribe CDMA based WLL services or GSM services.
The last few months have been very happening in the telecom industry, the newspapers have been full of telecom related news and the center of focus being Tariff Plans released by various operators, further deepening the confusion in the minds of the subscribers.
Lets look at these services one by one
Reliance hit the market with a big bang with their Dhiru Bhai pioneer plan but off late they have taken it back. It offers a package for Rs 500 per month, which includes 400 minutes of free talk time. One catch. With the interconnection law in place one will have to bear interconnect charge for these free calls except if you are calling within the Reliance network, which is not possible now as Reliance has over a million subscribers at present.
So one ends up paying an IUC of 60paise for a call to a GSM /WLL subscriber and IUC of 80paise for a call to a land line.
Tata Teleservices’ services one will have to pay just Rs 295 a month, for which you’ll get 125 minutes of free local airtime, irrespective of whether you are dialing a fixed line phone, a GSM phone or a WLL phone, this seems very lucrative to low end users.
Now moving ahead with our explorations for the best services for us, next comes the GSM services the first player that comes to the mind is BSNL with its lucrative Prepaid and Postpaid tariff plans.
Next would be Airtel GSM 012 offer. One pays 399 per month and gets Rs. 100 worth of free talk time. For cell-to-cell calls you pay Rs 1 a minute; for cell phone to fixed line calls, you’re charged Rs 2 a minute. You’ll also pay an extra Rs 49 a month for caller identification.
Other Private service providers have caught up their leaders in their respective regions so on price front they are more or less the same.
The GSM service providers offer a number of value added services like roaming, SMS, Voicemail etc.
But Tata Teleservices’ is catching up; it has just launched its SMS service.
What I feel is that the regulators are asking us to migrate from Landline to Mobile phones and also the gap between the tariff structure of GSM and CDMA is narrowing.
