Abstract

In September 2015, Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel announced that it would move to a more affordable pay-per-second plan for all its prepaid mobile customers in the wake of government’s warning to telecom service providers to compensate the customers for their call drops. Airtel’s decision to go in for a per-second billing option would provide great relief to customers who were earlier charged on a per-minute basis irrespective of whether the call got disconnected midway. As per the new per-second billing option of Airtel, the users would be charged based on the length of time they used the network. Industry experts observed that though Airtel’s per-second billing plan would benefit the users, it is not the best solution and that there need to be more stringent measures in place for addressing this issue.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the issues and concerns related to call drops.
• Analyze the government’s plan for compensating for call drops.
• Appreciate the move taken by Airtel in response to the government’s call drop concerns.
• Understand the implications of Airtel’s per-second pricing strategy as solution against call drops.

Keywords

Airtel,Call drop,Call drop compensation,Per-second billing plan,Telecom Regulatory Authority of India,“Pay For What You Use”,Per second pricing strategy,Prepaid subscribers