Zero-rental plans create a buzz

The battle among the telecom giants, such as Hutch, Reliance, Airtel, BSNL and Idea, has entered the postpaid segment as service providers are taking the route of zero rental plans and attractive schemes to lure customers to migrate from prepaid to postpaid segment.

Hutch recently introduced a zero-rental plan in which a new system of commitment-based plan wherein a subscriber gets talktime equal to the full value of the monthly charges was launched.

In addition to calls within the local Hutch network at 50 paise per minute, Hutch is providing calls to other local networks at 99 paise per minute.

The state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is giving hard-hitting competition especially on roaming rates. It has offered competitive roaming cellular tariffs for Excel and Cellone in Gujarat.

The BSNL roaming charges for outgoing calls is Rs 1.50 for STD and cell-to-cell calls.

K G Sharma, chief general manager, BSNL, Gujarat circle, said, "BSNL is constantly trying to increase its subscriber base in the postpaid segment and more new policies and plans are chalked out by our corporate office in Delhi."

Atul Joshi, chief operating officer, Airtel Gujarat, said, "Airtel was the first company to introduce the zero rental plans much ahead of Hutch. In fact, our zero rental schemes start from 299 plan whereas Hutch has started the scheme from 399 plan."

Idea Cellular introduced a plan that help customers save 50-72 per cent of their monthly charges and pay only for the customer's usage.

Subbaraman Iyer - circle head, Gujarat, said, "Our new plans have a lot of value proposition as the consumers gain through better tariff, waivers in monthly rental and caller line identification (CLI) charges. Apart from these, Idea has introduced free holiday voucher offer for customers taking a new postpaid connection where a customer is entitled for two nights and three days free stay in tourist destinations such as Shimla, Manali, Ooty, Nainital, Jaipur, Mt Abu, Daman and Goa.

Reliance Mobile also introduced two zero rental plans. The biggest benefit in these plans is that subscribers get free intra-circle calls worth the entire monthly rental making them virtually zero-rental.

Under the new plans, intra-circle calls to all Reliance phones cost 50 paise per minute, while those to non-Reliance phones cost Rs 1.50 per minute under one of the new plan and Re1 per minute under the other one.