Uninor launches 24x7 badalta discount plan

As India moves to mobile broadband
, particularly with the plans for increased
availability of 3G, the opportunities and needs for service differentiation will
significantly increase. Customers will soon look towards telecom operators who
will be offering them concessions and subsidies on calls and services.

Telcordia's Dynamic Pricing solution for operators in India is a service that
mobile operators are looking to offer to their customers. The solution will help
mobile operators increase revenue, through increased usage of excess capacity,
while helping to defer capex that would otherwise be required to upgrade
congested cells.

Uninor, the Indian unit of Norway's Telenor ASA, is the first telecom
operator to has launched the service in India. The plan will offer customers to
varied discounts on their calls based on traffic on the network. The discounts
will change with location and time, with each mobile phone tower broadcasting a
different discount. At the same location, the discount will change on an hourly
basis. By putting customers in control of costs, with 24x7 changing discount
rates, this could very well change the tariff structure in the Indian telecom
market.

Discounts are calculated by an intelligent 'Discount Engine' that relies on
IT systems to continuously monitor traffic at every tower in the network.
Applicable discounts based on real-time network traffic at every individual
tower are broadcast to all mobile phone screens under the coverage of that
tower. The system also ensures that the discount at which a call is originated
is maintained through the duration of the call-even if the customer moves from
the coverage of that tower to the next.

Under the '24x7 badalta discount plan' (DP), customers will be able to avail
a discount on their calls that ranges from 5% to as much as 60%, depending on
their location and time at which they make the call-so simply by crossing a
street. This discount will be applicable on a standard base call rate of 50
paisa per minute for any local call, Uninor-to-Uninor or Uninor-to-any other
operator. This means a one minute local call could cost as low as 20 paisa and
never more than 50 paisa. The prepaid and postpaid billing systems receive the
discount information through a real-time or batch interface. In addition, to
gauge and adjust responses to discounts, the Dynamic Pricing solution also
offers facilities to analyze the call data records.

Dynamic Pricing is available to all Uninor customers in Uttar Pradesh,
Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The
operator will be able to offer its services in all twenty-two circles.

Customers today are doing a lot more with their mobile phones. A solution
such as this, which will work on both revenue optimization for telecom operators
as well as bring the price down for customers can change the landscape of the
telecom industry.

Madhura Mukherjee

madhurak@cybermedia.co.in