GSM War - TATA DOCOMO

From last couple of days, there have been ads (in the paper, on the bill boards) about Tata Docomo. Wow, one more operator into already crowded service place? Not a bad move and not a bad timing to enter this market now in my opinion.

First of all, Docomo is a BIG name in Japan. I still remember the times when we used to work for a NTT-Docomo competitor in Japan and how Docomo virtually wiped off that competition (with able support from us also :-) ).

Secondly, with number-portability option coming into place, I guess people will start moving across operators, while retaining the same phone number. So, not necessarily Tata-Docomo has to find "new" subscribers, but can as well pull other "existing" subscribers from other operators. With schemes such as 1 paisa/second billing, it is surely an attractive proposition. As their Ad says, if you talk for 12 second, you pay 12 paisa and not that minimum amount / minute. Good. Pay for as much as you speak.

Looking at these rates, my memory goes back to exactly a decade ago, back in 1999 when I owned my first mobile phone. Rates used to be around 8 Rs per minute for outgoing calls and around 2 Rs per minute for incoming calls (Yes, I used to pay for incoming calls too ) :-( Compare it with 60 paisa per minute outgoing calls and absolutely Free incoming calls !!! Who cannot afford a mobile these days?

Lastly, Docomo is also known for lot of value added services in Japan, hope they will bring all those into India as well. Hmm, watch out Airtels and Vodafones, a new giant is coming :-)

(BTW, real "wiki-pedia" says that Docomo actually stands for "Do Communication over Mobile", it is a passe now, communication is taken for granted, people are asking, what else?)

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