Indigo -> Now more purple

Is it any wonder why mobilink continues to remain the market leader? With poor quality service, continuous problems, compromisations in the billing system, and what not, they still manage to pull the biggest weight around.

The answer to this mystery is surprisingly simple. Its their marketing machine which is responsible. They always have something new to offer, something to pull people in, some new to entice. Be it Octane, Ladies First, or the Jazz Icon search, there's something which keeps people going back to mobilink.

The latest in their strategy is pulling in (and keeping) postpaid customers. This i suspect came from the recent announcement of Warid's new postpaid packages. Their new offering is no where near warid's offer, but a lot better than its previous ones.

Here's the lowdown. They now charge a flat airtime rate for all calls everywhere. Then, they add Rs. 1.25 to all calls made to other mobile networks, and Rs. 0.52 to fixed line networks.What they've introduced now is weekend rates, which means that on Sunday's, call cost less.

Free minutes have increased (they claim that) but free minutes are valid only on airtime charges. So if you call other networks, you still get charged the interconnect rates (mentioned above). SMS is also more expensive than other operators at Rs. 1.

Now, remember i said Mobilink's the market leader because of their marketing? Now let me elaborate on that. They're the leader because they're marketing strategy involves hoodwinking the poor customer as much as they can!! They do offer calling rate as low as Rs. 0.40, but what they don't mention is that its only on sundays, only valid for other mobilink numbers and on their highest package. For other operators, add on the interconnect! SMS rates are more expensive than the rest, and even general airtime is more expensive that what any other operators give.

I've done a small comparison between the different packages offered here. Check out the complete worksheet here.