How low will they go?

Lowering SMS rates has been the latest (and greatest?) move by service providers in the bid to get more customers on their service. Originally started by Telenor, with their Djuice offering, which took SMS rate down to 20 paisa's (to any network) from the prevailing rate of Rs. 1 (for local) and 1.5 (for other networks) in the market.

SMS (or Short Message Service) has taken the world by storm in recent years, after it was 'accidently' left in the network design by the original engineers of GSM network, because they had some bandwidth leftover. The original use of SMS was to transmit and recieve troubleshooting messages over the network, so as to provide better service to its users. However, as soon as it came into the hand of consumers, they exploited it as best as they could.

Following the move by Telenor, Paktel offered up its 10 paisa per SMS package to the public. The last to cash in(?) on this wave was Ufone, which has come up with a slightly different offering. Instead of introducing a new package, they now offer people to buy SMS bundles of Rs. 25 to 125 which allows them to send from a 100 to 1250 msgs in a month. The bundle expire in a month and any sms's sent in that duration, will be subtracted from the total bought, and not charged seperately.

So who's next now? Mobilink and Warid, both show no signs of offering up new SMS rates, as they're concentrating on voice calls and value added services to profit. They surely can, since these are the top two providers (# of consumer-wise) in the country.

The Friend and Family Culture

The friend and family numbers (FnF), a feature much sought after about two years ago, now almost everywhere, are a set of numbers which you dial frequently and which have a lower calling rate than your other calls. With the exception of Ufone (since its a subsidiary of PTCL?), which allows one PTCL number to be added as friend and family, all network operators allow you to set other subscribers on the same network as FnF and make more calls to them.

This service initially started on Mobilink, where usually a call would cost around Rs. 7 to 8 a minute on normal numbers, and about Rs. 2.33 a minute on FnF numbers. They would allow you to have only three FnF numbers though, and charge a subscription fee of Rs. 30 for each change. An amount which was well recovered in your first call. This service was also only available on numbers started with "9", which meant the very early ones, and was not even advertised. Slowly though, the news leaked out, and people started looking for "9" sims just to enjoy a lower call rate. The demand/supply was such at the time that one number could be sold for as much as Rs. 15,000/- (an actual number offered to me for my sim.. sadly though, i wanted to keep my number :@) where they normally cost 1/10th that amount. Later, mobilink started offering this service to other subscribers as well, and the demand/supply equalized. With the inception of the Octane package, the FnF on previous sims was quickly forgotten.

So why did FnF gain so much fame? Simple.. It allowed lovers as such to talk thoughout the day at almost 1/3 the normal cost of out going calls. I had friends who would use up a 625 card in one call.. and that too on a FnF number, and be extremely satisfied. Now, one thing to note here is, that at that time, having an affair was still pretty much taboo, and a mobile offered convenience and above all, security from the prying eyes of family.

Moving on to my 'favourite mobile company' (take THAT mobilink!!!), Warid offered, and still does offer, pretty good deals on FnF numbers. They were the ones that revived the culture, and 'enabled' (im being very polite here) mobilink to provide FnF to all subscribers, by bringing in their own FnF package. This one cost about Rs.1.5 in the day and about Rs.0.75 at nite, and above all, connected the call on the first go, and allowed you to talk without hassle as well (as opposed to Paktel, which i'll be covering later). Oh how have we used (and misused) this FnF service! The same friend, who used up the 625 card on Mobilink, got himself a seperate mobile with a warid sim and now spends the Rs. 250 card in one go. He's almost upped his talk time 3 times and cut down expenses by half. Ever wonder why warid reached 4 million users in such a short while? Wonder no more!!

That was the battle of the titans! So what have others been upto? Playing catch-up mostly. Somehow, their packages dont seem interesting enough to be taken seriously at all. Except, i guess, Paktel AMS service. They had a Gold package with Late Night Option. The beauty of it was, they charged you Rs. 10 a day, and offered FREE paktel to paktel calls (no, with no 15 minute restriction either) throughout the night (after 11 pm till 7 am). That has been used/misused quite well too. Now, paktel has this good thing of not discontinuing a package plan, or automatically changing it, when they lauch a new one. So the old one, though discontinued years ago, is still active on sets who havent changed it. The only problem is... it takes a HELLISHLY long time to connect, disconnects after every other half-hour, and gives horrible voice quality. But hey... its free isnt it. The latest to enter this market of FnF numbers is Telenor, with its Djuice Nights connection, where they've introduced 5 FnF numbers with a lower calling rate.

Now im wondering where i'll put the reason of why i started this post in the first place...?! Oh well.. this seems a good a place as any. In the previous Warid post-paid connections, you were allowed to have upto 20 FnF numbers, now, with the new packages, they've lowered that to 5. Not bad, since the increase in free minutes and lower dialing rates more than compensates for it. And plus, i didnt even put 3 numbers in my FnF list last time, so it doesnt bother me either.