NRI's: Call Home Now
Non-Resident Indians (NRI's) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) have all the reasons to rejoice even while staying away from home and family. The improvement in communication infrastructure and the omnipresent Internet has created several opportunities to talk to family and friends back home. It is becoming cheaper to call home with each passing day.
About 3 years back, there were a host of small companies selling unreliable calling cards online as well as in stores and each catered to a loyal set of customers with varying needs. It was annoying to dial a 10 digit toll-free number followed by a 8-12 digit PIN (depending on the calling card) and a 15 digit telephone number(including the international dialing code and country code) to hear "The number you are calling is busy, please dial after sometime" or "All lines in this route are busy, please dial after sometime". It was a continuous test of patience and required courage to attempt to dial again.
There are approx. 25 million NRI's living in different parts of the world of which an estimated 2.5 million NRI's currently reside in the US (Source: Wikipedia article on NRIs and PIO). This excludes the burgeoning population of short-term visitors coming to the US for business who stay for less than six months. Assuming that an NRI spends an average of $10 per month to call home, a conservative estimate on market size for calling India from the US is $300 million per year. This is a sizable market for which phone companies should fight for and make it competitive. It's happening now and NRI's are again the winners.
It all started about 2.5 years back when Reliance Communications International (A Reliance Group Company) launched Reliance India Call , a reliable means to call India using PINless dialing. The service spread like wild-fire largely with word of mouth publicity. Although, it is currently offering a rate of 12.9 cents/minute which is on the higher side, there are no arguments that they provided excellent service. They tried to address and resolve two major issues:
1. Reliability: The use of archaic phone cards did not guarantee the promised minutes. Additionally, problems with connectivity, clarity and pulse-rate were too complex to make calling home a pleasing experience. Reliance hit it on the dot, offered instant reliable connectivity and PINless dialing. Moreover, they made sure that the pulse rate is kept at 60 seconds and offered standardization in the fragmented India Calling market.
2. Simplicity of Recharge and Postpaid option: Reliance India Call realized that the only way to grow is to provide excellent customer service. They designed an automated telephonic recharge system that would run parallel to the on-line recharge facility already available. It provided an opportunity for people on the move to recharge their Reliance account and call home. It was easy to use and was fully operational 24 hrs.
With the expansion of Yahoo! India and their focus on the Indian market, Yahoo took consideration of the India calling market while introducing Yahoo! Voice services. About 6 months back, Yahoo started offering a facility to call anywhere in the world at lower costs through Yahoo! Messenger. While there are a lot of companies such as Skype and MSN essentially providing the same service, Yahoo! took special consideration for Indian customers by offering calling India at 9.9 cents/min. They even offered free minutes to each of their users to call India on Diwali, the festival of lights and a popular Indian festival. The only flip side of using Yahoo! Messenger to call is to use a headphone and a microphone. However, the voice quality and cheaper rate (compared with Reliance India Call) makes it my choice. Additionally, it is really easy to dial from your computer as you do not need to input the phone numbers over and again.
Although the offerings above are pretty competitive and we have come a long way from the unreliable phone card services. The latest offering from Bharti Airtel, India's leading telecommunications company serving over 30 million customers swept the show by introducing Airtel Call Home service. They are offering 7.9 cents/min to call anywhere in India. With the initial promotion (valid till January 7, 2007) of doubling the introductory charge amount the effective per minute cost would be approx. 4 cents/min.
There are other calling services available that are equally reliable and readers might provide references to some of their pet peeves in the comments section. Having said that, the India Calling market is booming and in a few months we will see the rates drop to a level that all of us can keep in touch with our friends and families using reliable and affordable communication means. With the ready availability of telephones in India, folks in India are just a call away. While it is good for NRI's , there should be services to reasonably call US from India as well from regular land lines and cell phones. That would make the world really flat and small. Long Live the Indian Telecom Revolution !!
About 3 years back, there were a host of small companies selling unreliable calling cards online as well as in stores and each catered to a loyal set of customers with varying needs. It was annoying to dial a 10 digit toll-free number followed by a 8-12 digit PIN (depending on the calling card) and a 15 digit telephone number(including the international dialing code and country code) to hear "The number you are calling is busy, please dial after sometime" or "All lines in this route are busy, please dial after sometime". It was a continuous test of patience and required courage to attempt to dial again.
There are approx. 25 million NRI's living in different parts of the world of which an estimated 2.5 million NRI's currently reside in the US (Source: Wikipedia article on NRIs and PIO). This excludes the burgeoning population of short-term visitors coming to the US for business who stay for less than six months. Assuming that an NRI spends an average of $10 per month to call home, a conservative estimate on market size for calling India from the US is $300 million per year. This is a sizable market for which phone companies should fight for and make it competitive. It's happening now and NRI's are again the winners.
It all started about 2.5 years back when Reliance Communications International (A Reliance Group Company) launched Reliance India Call , a reliable means to call India using PINless dialing. The service spread like wild-fire largely with word of mouth publicity. Although, it is currently offering a rate of 12.9 cents/minute which is on the higher side, there are no arguments that they provided excellent service. They tried to address and resolve two major issues:
1. Reliability: The use of archaic phone cards did not guarantee the promised minutes. Additionally, problems with connectivity, clarity and pulse-rate were too complex to make calling home a pleasing experience. Reliance hit it on the dot, offered instant reliable connectivity and PINless dialing. Moreover, they made sure that the pulse rate is kept at 60 seconds and offered standardization in the fragmented India Calling market.
2. Simplicity of Recharge and Postpaid option: Reliance India Call realized that the only way to grow is to provide excellent customer service. They designed an automated telephonic recharge system that would run parallel to the on-line recharge facility already available. It provided an opportunity for people on the move to recharge their Reliance account and call home. It was easy to use and was fully operational 24 hrs.
With the expansion of Yahoo! India and their focus on the Indian market, Yahoo took consideration of the India calling market while introducing Yahoo! Voice services. About 6 months back, Yahoo started offering a facility to call anywhere in the world at lower costs through Yahoo! Messenger. While there are a lot of companies such as Skype and MSN essentially providing the same service, Yahoo! took special consideration for Indian customers by offering calling India at 9.9 cents/min. They even offered free minutes to each of their users to call India on Diwali, the festival of lights and a popular Indian festival. The only flip side of using Yahoo! Messenger to call is to use a headphone and a microphone. However, the voice quality and cheaper rate (compared with Reliance India Call) makes it my choice. Additionally, it is really easy to dial from your computer as you do not need to input the phone numbers over and again.
Although the offerings above are pretty competitive and we have come a long way from the unreliable phone card services. The latest offering from Bharti Airtel, India's leading telecommunications company serving over 30 million customers swept the show by introducing Airtel Call Home service. They are offering 7.9 cents/min to call anywhere in India. With the initial promotion (valid till January 7, 2007) of doubling the introductory charge amount the effective per minute cost would be approx. 4 cents/min.
There are other calling services available that are equally reliable and readers might provide references to some of their pet peeves in the comments section. Having said that, the India Calling market is booming and in a few months we will see the rates drop to a level that all of us can keep in touch with our friends and families using reliable and affordable communication means. With the ready availability of telephones in India, folks in India are just a call away. While it is good for NRI's , there should be services to reasonably call US from India as well from regular land lines and cell phones. That would make the world really flat and small. Long Live the Indian Telecom Revolution !!
posted by AG & HDG at 6:53 PM
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