Tata DoCoMo offers pay-per-character scheme for SMS

Heating up the pricing war, Tata DoCoMo has come up with a new charging scheme for its short messaging services. Christened 'Diet SMS', the new service will charge one paisa per character for short messages, spaces not included.

With the new scheme, acknowledging an SMS with an 'Ok' reply will cost 2 paisa instead of the full SMS charge levied by other telecom service providers. The one paisa rate will apply for a message up to 15 characters.

The new offer follows another novel charging method by Tata DoCoMo of levying a flat rate for voice calls irrespective of duration. The company had also earlier introduced a per-second billing for voice calls to benefit short duration calls.

Deepak Gulati, president, Tata DoCoMo, speaking about the new offers, said that they were aimed at today's customers who are discerning and look out for new and transparent services.

The Diet SMS service will be an option available and the customers can also use standard SMS service if required.

Diet SMS will require the customer to send the recipient's number and message to a short code number.

The services is currently available only on the Tata DoCoMo network.