In a interview with Rediff Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Telecommunications and Information Technology has made a interesting prediction that phone calls could become totally free in India
The minister was present at US-India Business Council in Washington DC recently.
He said that “the call rates are so cheap that a lot of telecom companies keep complaining how they are bleeding and how they are in the red. I think the day is not far away when call charges will be free and people will have to make money on data transfer.”
Pilot acknowledged that “it’s just an assumption, but that’s the way it’s headed. But it’s certainly the next phase of demands that the Indian telecom consumers are making and most certainly the way the telecom operators are looking at in the future.”‘
It’s always cool to hear about Free Stuff but I think it’s hard to happen in a country like India where Value added services have never brought much revenue to Operators and the ARPU (Average Revenue per User ) is pretty low. Users are not willing to pay huge amounts for data plans either. 3G Tariffs are going to be pretty expensive initially as Telcos would try to recover the huge licensing fees paid.
What do you think ?