Rs199 for a mobile phone connection, for life

New Delhi: The 'life-time' prepaid mobile wars are back. Reliance Communications, the code-division multiple access (CDMA) telecom major who first started the war two years ago at a one-time cost of Rs999, has now announced a similar scheme at a quarter of that price, Rs199.

A price war is widely expected, following RCom's move. In terms of competitive offerings, GSM market leader Bharti Airtel has on offer a lifetime scheme pegged at a one-time payment of Rs495, that bundles local calls at Re1 per minute.

'Lifetime' plans allow pre-paid customers to have lifetime validity for a one-time payment, enabling the user to receive calls without having to recharge at periodic intervals.

However, it remains to be seen if that would indeed be true in this case, or whether the 'lifetime' validity comes with a rider clause of a periodic recharge.

Outgoing calls, even on lifetime plans, usually attract the generally prevalent local tariff of around 99 paise per minute. Other calling tariff options would vary basis customer's usage trends.

Lifetime schemes also have an added benefit for telecom companies in 'securing' a user base by promising a stagnant phone number via the lifetime scheme, in the absence of number mobility. Reports indicate 90 per cent of RCom's wireless user base being made up of pre-paid customers, following the industry trends.Given customer acquisition costs, retention of the subscriber base is top of the mind of telecom companies, in a business largely devoid of differentiators in terms of service quality, technological factors, or other parameters. Most telecom companies offer plans effectively marked to market, and provide services at best generic or replicable by competing service providers.