Forward ya Backward?

Remember the 1990s in India's telecom sector? If I were to describe it in two sentences, they will be the salient features of the landline phones and cell phone in that period.

1. People used to wait for the night (9:30 pm) before placing long-distance calls (STD).
2. People had to pay Rs. 16 a minute for incoming calls when the cell phones were just introduced.

It is all part of history now, thanks to the telecom revolution. But this revolution seems to have missed one important country, the USA. If someone would have told this to me a couple of months back, I wouldn't have believed him. But now I have a first-hand experience.

When I wanted to break the good news to my friend Anurag a few days back, I found myself waiting for the clock to tick past 9 pm.

Why? Because I had exhausted my cell phone call minutes for the month.

Why? Because I didn't realize that they would be charging minutes even for incoming calls (@ Rs. 4/minute approx.) until it was too late to avoid the inevitable.

Guess what? India is two steps ahead of USA in this regard. Not only were all incoming calls made free years ago, we now have operators who pay you to receive incoming calls. I haven't opted for SMS services in my plan, but my friends tell me that they have to pay to receive SMSes. Isn't that ingenious?

I never thought I would be using Skype for making domestic calls, but that's what I eventually did. It is much cheaper than my cell phone plan.

Me? A Spend-thrift!

My mobile says so. Over the past 2 months, I have managed to spend Rs. 1800 from my mobile and will be forced to live with Rs. 300 for the next 4 months as I have no plans to recharge before the due date.

Thanks to my over-sympathetic attitude towards my friends and family members, whom I chose to remain in contact with by calling again and again, and choosing to take incoming calls while roaming, I now face the crunch. For the first time in my life, I am feeling the guilt of being a spend-thrift. But as always, I have managed to find scape-goats. This time they are my wing-mates. And to prove my point, I have the figures too. And after calculating, I found that of that Rs. 1800, Rs 600 was spent by my wing-mates. I still haven't decided whether I should withdraw the concession I give them (A call for which I charge Rs. 2 actually costs me Rs. 2.29). Maybe I will have to if the situation doesn't change. And maybe, the situation will never change if we start believeing the Freakonomics!