Advertisment

Aircel's competitors say "not bothered" by free call offer

author-image
Sharath Kumar
New Update

While its competitors are mulling tariff hike, Aircel has introduced a new plan which allows users to have free local calling minutes with data usages. But Aircel's competitors seem to be not bothered by the move.

Advertisment

The new plan from Aircel - 'Surf to talk free' - offers the free calling with data usage.

Aircel's chief marketing officer Anupam Vasudevan says the subscribers will be benefited from the scheme. "It is not discounting, it is actually giving the customer extra," Vasudevan is quoted as saying, while explaining reason behind aiming higher revenue rather than the per second profitability.

An Aircel's rival company executive points out that the scheme is just a teaser from the company to attract customers, yielding higher revenue and market share, but it did not imply a lower call rate.

Advertisment

Another competitor pointed out that the GSM technology network - used by most major Indian operators - is not suited for data consumption.

For voice, companies make Rs 0.35-0.50 per minute while for similar capacity consumption at current data prices the GSM 2G and 3G networks get Rs 0.06-0.07, the competitor said.

The Economic Times quotes Gartner's research director, Kamlesh Bhatia stating that similar offer from an LTE (long-term evolution) or 4G operator would be much more disruptive because its key usage is data and its network would not be clogged by voice consumption. "A plan like this will affect call rates across the industry if rolled out by an LTE player because you (existing GSM players) will lose a chunk of high telephone service users."

tech-news