Norwegian telecom operator Telenor-controlled Uninor on Friday unleashed another round of tariff war in the country’s overcrowded record-low tariff mobile market with a new plan where a customer may pay as low as 20 paise for a minute on a call. Until now, per second billing was the lowest price plan wherein the lowest price for a call was 60 paise per minute.
Telenor holds 67.25% in Uninor while the remaining is held by the countrys second largest real estate firm, Unitech. The new tariff plan branded, ’24X7 Badalta Plan’ provides a customer with a fixed discount on the parameters of location of the customer and what time of the day does he call. Discounts are calculated by the ‘discount engine’ that utilises the state of the art IT system to calculate discounts depending upon the traffic at every tower in the network.
The subscribers will be able to avail discounts between 5% and 60%, depending on their location and the time of the call. The discount will be available only on the local calls and this facility doesn’t apply to long distance calls. The plan would be available to Uninor users in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
“The new plan will not only help customers make significant savings on their bills, it will also help us utilise our network capacity better, which will help in traffic growth and revenue growth,” Uninor executive vice-president (operations) Rohit Chandra said.
The plan is being launched at a time when tariffs are already at rock bottom rates with rates as low as one paise per second.
On Wednesday, the country’s largest operator, Bharti Airtel maintained that the era of irrational pricing and competitive intensity was nearing an end with operators not having much propensity to drop rates any further. Uninor holds a pan-India licence to offer services in all the 22 circles. It has also received spectrum to roll out services in 21 circles. At present, Uninor’s services are available in the eight circles of UP (West), UP (East), Bihar, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh with a total subscriber base of 4.2 million.