coming of age..
Ever since mobile companies started operating in Pakistan after the initial ban, they've had one thing in mind. Make as much money as possible by giving as little choices to the consumers as possible. Way back then.. i made a prediction that one day, mobile companies would put *consumers* first someday!
Seems like the day has come! With such intense competition going around among the six mobile companies we have here, and the impending buyout of Paktel by China Mobile, new innovative mobile packages were bound to make their way which would benefit a particular class of users, such as smsers or callers.
First it was Jazz Octane.. a haven for sms'ers... by making sms's very cheap. Consequently, they souped up their call rates on the package to make up for the deficit. Next Telenor came up with their Djuice package (i think Jazz just were quicker to market their product, trying to beat a big bad foreigner to the punch? by releasing Octane first) which was very similar to Octance and very good for people sending/recieving smses.
Now, finally to complete this stage of growth, Telenor has started a new Talkshalk package, which is geared towards people who call a lot, especially the smaller calls. SMS rates are higher in this one (at Rs. 1 against the Djuice rate of 0.2) but calls rates have come amazingly down. Finally telenor has implemented 30 second billing, and to one up warid, applied it to *all* networks instead of just its own and PTCL.
Paktel, one the other hand, has also introduced a new package in which you pay Rs. 500 a month, and all calls from Paktel to Paktel (upto 15 minutes) are FREE. Technically, you would need to make atleast 4.5 hours of calls (18 calls of 15 minutes each) to breakeven, and from then onwards its savings galore.
The other two companies, namely Ufone and Warid are till now focusing more on their value added service, rather than adding new packages (though we still have to see).
So overall, i think the market has now come out of its initial kid-phase, and has to really provide some benefits back to the consumers on whose back they make the tall claims of "x million customers". In times to come, im pretty sure they'll actually get serious about making the lives of the people better.
Seems like the day has come! With such intense competition going around among the six mobile companies we have here, and the impending buyout of Paktel by China Mobile, new innovative mobile packages were bound to make their way which would benefit a particular class of users, such as smsers or callers.
First it was Jazz Octane.. a haven for sms'ers... by making sms's very cheap. Consequently, they souped up their call rates on the package to make up for the deficit. Next Telenor came up with their Djuice package (i think Jazz just were quicker to market their product, trying to beat a big bad foreigner to the punch? by releasing Octane first) which was very similar to Octance and very good for people sending/recieving smses.
Now, finally to complete this stage of growth, Telenor has started a new Talkshalk package, which is geared towards people who call a lot, especially the smaller calls. SMS rates are higher in this one (at Rs. 1 against the Djuice rate of 0.2) but calls rates have come amazingly down. Finally telenor has implemented 30 second billing, and to one up warid, applied it to *all* networks instead of just its own and PTCL.
Paktel, one the other hand, has also introduced a new package in which you pay Rs. 500 a month, and all calls from Paktel to Paktel (upto 15 minutes) are FREE. Technically, you would need to make atleast 4.5 hours of calls (18 calls of 15 minutes each) to breakeven, and from then onwards its savings galore.
The other two companies, namely Ufone and Warid are till now focusing more on their value added service, rather than adding new packages (though we still have to see).
So overall, i think the market has now come out of its initial kid-phase, and has to really provide some benefits back to the consumers on whose back they make the tall claims of "x million customers". In times to come, im pretty sure they'll actually get serious about making the lives of the people better.
Labels: speaking out
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