No offence to anyone out here, especially Rohit whose efforts I am not trying to undermine.
But the slew of 'goodies', as some people put it were unreasonable. The best of corporate connections will offer you either 10000 free national messages, or cheaper STD call rates or CUG. Note,
or and not
and. I am sure Rohit and team took a more practical view when going to negotiate for the features of the card. Otherwise guys it's like having your cake, eating it, and then getting it replenished when done. No telecom company is going to give you one STD number free (which exists only on CDMA players, and that too Tata-Tata or Reliance-Reliance for 496 a month) and national messaging free (the cheapest I've seen in India now is 25p without packs) and CUG (which exists only on Airtel Friends packs and college/corporate connections) as well! They probably will give all this to you, but for a monthly rental of atleast 500. How many people are willing to pay that, especially when in a BSchool? :-)
To my mind, the best plan in India as of now is a certain red-and-white company's 399 plan (800 minutes local free, all-India SMS 50p, local calls 50p, national calls 1) which kicks @#$, and is probably on par with any corporate connection.
When we were at MICA, we negotiated for a bulk deal with Idea and Vodafone for CUG. And trust me, no matter how PaGaL you are, you will end up calling your batchmates more often than PaGaLs. No, seriously! Are you more likely to call up your PaGaL friends or call your batchmates for assignment work or fest work?! And most of the CUG SIMs come with decent enough STD rates for you to call up your PG friends. No disrespect meant, I was extremely kicked about this whole PG card thing myself but it will probably mean a lot of people shuffling between two SIMs.
I have been tracking this thread and was really hoping the thing came out. Like someone said, it would be amazing brand building for PG in any case.
I know this is against the tone of the thread and I am probably inviting a lot of groans (oooh!) for this. But it was quite amusing watching week after week, people putting in one demand after the other and thinking that Rohit would be able to make a card appear out of nowhere. Getting a new phone connection is not an easy thing, guys. Before a new scheme is launched, there are many, many hurdles including, as Rohit already mentioned, TRAI clearance.
And at the end of the day, a company will launch a scheme only if it makes sense for them. Sure, a scheme with all the goodies sounds great to us, but how much ARPU does that translate into for the company? Does it make sense having a SIM pack with
on the cover, when all their advertising is centered towards Dhoni / Zoozoos / AR Rahman / Hrithik? They're not doing this as a favour to us. And will the card provide enough volumes for them to roll out the scheme in large numbers? For all the devotion and loyalty, even PG tees sell just about 300 (community: 320,179 at last count).
Ok, I guess I'm being a little cynical here but it's a working Saturday and I needed to get it out somewhere
Chuck
A Mallu Accent is just a Hyundai made in Kerala.
www.facebook.com/ChucksComicsAndStuff
