Missed Calls As Communications

From an article over The Economic Times called “>Cellcos miss moolah on missed calls>

The Indian mobile user has mastered the art of missed calls communicating without answering the calls and causing a revenue loss to the service provider …

Very often, a couple or a group of friends who are supposed to meet at a particular place, choose to signal that they have reached by giving a missed call, rather than talk or send an SMS (text message) saving on the Rs 2 or Rs 1 that it could cost.

I don’t think this phenomenon is unique to India, or even to mobile operators. I remember my grandparents always asking my parents to “give two rings” when we’d made it home safely if we were travelling in bad weather for example. And in fact, many taxi firms do exactly the same thing to let you know they are about to arrive. To be honest, the article doesn’t discuss hard figures, so it’s hard to say if this is really having an impact or not.

What was of more interest was this paragraph:

For teeny boppers, missed calls are a way of life. After all, they have to balance pre-paid cards on limited budgets yet at the same time send loads of messages, play games, download ringtones and talk for hours on the phone with their various friends, provided its an incoming call. Missed calls help to save on talktime a precious commodity for teenagers.

This is what operators the world over should be worrying about: if their future customers are already against spending money for voice communications, what’s it going to be like when they all have some sort of VoIP technology on their handset? Let’s face it, “teeny boppers” are about as early adopter as it gets for this kind of thing, and in a few short years they’ll be amongst the most affluent consumers on the planet — which might sound great, but they’ll also be the smartest consumers on the planet.