Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Too much of a free thing
An interesting battle is brewing in the mobile industry.
GSM operators are objecting to Tata Indicom's offer of a pre-paid tariff plan that allows users to receive incoming calls free for two years even after they have exhausted their talktime.
Their objections: The ''non-stop mobile'' plan allows non-revenue generating users to be included in subscriber base reported by the company. Spectrum is allocated on the basis of subscriber figures. So, Tata Indicom will get more spectrum for these non-paying subscribers. But the government will not get any additional spectrum usage charges since these subscribers generate zero revenue.
Let's see where this goes.
GSM operators are objecting to Tata Indicom's offer of a pre-paid tariff plan that allows users to receive incoming calls free for two years even after they have exhausted their talktime.
Their objections: The ''non-stop mobile'' plan allows non-revenue generating users to be included in subscriber base reported by the company. Spectrum is allocated on the basis of subscriber figures. So, Tata Indicom will get more spectrum for these non-paying subscribers. But the government will not get any additional spectrum usage charges since these subscribers generate zero revenue.
Let's see where this goes.
# posted by Ashok @ 12:05 AM 
