Tariff Traps

"Pay per second irrespective of whether it is a local call or STD" is the new tagline almost all network providers are using to cheat their customers. the word 'cheat' cannot be used actually since the network providers are just showing the path to some well and many customers are following the path and falling in it. This tactic was first introduced by Tata DoCoMo. DoCoMo is a Japanese giant which entered India and introduced this new concept of per second pulse. This concept is not worthy at all for people whose calls are usually for longer duration. In fact those who make calls for longer duration are actually paying more than what is required. For example consider a guy is having a plan of 50p per min and changes to per second pulse. if he calls for say 10 min 4 sec then in his old plan he has to pay 5rs 50p but in his new tariff he has to pay 604paise. That is 6 rs 4p. So he is under a loss of 54 paisa in one call. Suppose if his old plan costs him some 30p per min then by choosing per second plan he is losing much more than above said amount. This per second pulse helps only for those people who make calls more frequently and if the duration of each calls is less. The duration is the key factor for choosing any plan. If a guy makes more local calls then this per second pulse should not be taken for consideration also since there are so many good plans available for local calls. As of now if a person gives priority to local calls then he should not pay more than 40p per minute irrespective on which network he is in. MTN has introduced new plan wherein all the local calls will be charged at 29p per minute. But there is an asterisk present there which tells that there is a rent of 2rs per day. If a person is paying 40p per min now then he should shift to MTN network only if he makes calls for more than 18.18 min per day. So if a makes calls for 10min per day then he should not prefer MTN plan itself. And nowadays people do not analyze all these things and simply they go by what the advertisement says. now Tata DoCoMo has introduced another concept of buddy net wherein if u register to that and calls another person who has also registered then the call rate changes to 1p/6sec for local calls and 1p/2sec for std calls. If u register to this then we have to pay 1rupee rent per day. This plan is good if you make calls to some person frequently and if that person is also using Tata DoCoMo only and if that person agrees to register to that network. There is an 'AND' gate between all these conditions. So this plan is waste for normal usage since we would be calling different people who will be using different networks and even if they are using same DoCoMo then they might not have registered to that plan. And still the network providers will get the rent from every user irrespective of how much usage of the plan they have made. Bottom line if the network providers introduce a new plan then it is obvious that there is some trap present there. So we have to know our requirement first and then go with the change.