September - October 2009 again saw telecom operators in India fighting it out with each other on the pricing of call charges. The recent moves by Reliance, Airtel, Aircel etc. on pricing were bit late response to new entrant (in GSM) Tata Docomo's August launch of 1 second billing for local and STD calls. The pricing was placed at 1 paisa per second (Rs 0.01 per second). Till that time all operators only offered 1 minute billing. The Indian market is a predominantly prepaid market and prices in India are already among the lowest in the world. The call charges for local and STD are now around Rs 0.50 to Rs 0.60 per minute (USD 0.011 to USD 0.012) typically without any contact or monthly charges. The telecom minister recently announced that he foresees rate to drop to less than half of that for STDs and one to one fifth of the current charges (Rs 0.25 for STD and Rs 0.10 for local). We may come closer to that once the
mobile number portability becomes a reality in coming months, when subscribers will be able to retain their phone number while switching the operators.
The cost of SMS, value added services, Wireless data plans have not dropped any where close to in terms of trend we see in voice services. They have stayed almost the same for quite some time and in some cases may have increased. With widespread availability and usage of smart phones and netbooks it will be good if wireless data access charges like for unlimited internet browsing, email access are also made more attractive to subscribers.
Recent
annoucements by Intel, BSNL and HCL are encouraging prospects of wireless broadband access. There are also rumours that
Google may also be interested in Wireless internet infrastructure in India. So let us see how things pan up.
