Phone Fury

Acision, the world leading messaging company, announced that over 660 million smses were delivered across its messaging system during Eid in 48 hour period in Pakistan in October, 2009, a mind-boggling figure indeed.

Pakistan according to Acision is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. It is becoming very common of sending smses during festivals, mainly it is inexpensive, easy to use and supported by 100 per cent of all mobile sets in the market. Another reason is the introduction of SMS bundles in the market for the prepaid segment. Now SMS has becoming the most preferred choice for communication and is set to remain the most dominant area of revenue for mobile companies.

Take as a whole, one of the amazing growth in the telecommunication sector is due to number of factors, one of which is definitely the relentless and highly aggressive marketing activities by telecom sector who bombardment us with messages about their products and services from every direction.

There are five major players in the market and each one of them has come up with enticing and competitive packages. Let have a look at each of the company’s package offerings and of the users of these packages on how economical these packages are and whether they deliver on their promises.

Zong

As a late entrant is wisely focusing on converting customers from other networks and has also aimed at positioning itself as a ‘second SIM’ option by offering competitive packages and rates. Zong claim that they offer a lowest call rates in the industry, at 45 paisa only. In addition they have flexible ‘happy hour’ packages which claim is the only one of its kind in Pakistan.

Telenor

With Aniee, Sonia Jehan as their brand ambassadors, Telenor tool on the market leader, Mobilink. By introducing the catchy ‘talkshawk’ as its brand extension, it has captured lot of chunk of the market.

Warid Telecom

Crazy seems to the brand mantra for Warid telecom for they have packages titles ‘Voice Craze’, ‘Infinite Craze’ and ‘Sunday Craze’. Unfortunately all this craziness has failed to depict the clear cut image for the brand and perhaps Warid is the weakest in term of brand recall where telecom advertising is concerned.

Ufone

In the market having lot of clutters it took a brave player to make a mark with advertising that definitely stands out. Ufone’s Slapstick comedy is hard to miss. Ufone, too, claims to offer lowest services available and has scored a major success with its SMS bundle offer.

Mobilink

As the market leader in Pakistan, huge customer base has become its biggest asset as for many users it proves cheaper to remain with Mobilink since the most of their contacts are on the same network.

Though each service is doing best to outdo the other in the ‘rate race’, as some users use ‘jazz ladies first’ to call to their family and friends and talk to them for an hour as it charge them only Rs10 per hour.

It is obvious that the phone war are not going to end anytime soon- and if it results more benefit to the consumer, so much the better.