Archive for October 22nd, 2008

The Culture Of Intentional Missed Calls

Published by Babar Bhatti on October 22, 2008 under Emerging Markets Telecom, Mobile Phones, Telecommunications

A few aspects of modern Pakistani culture are as prominent as the practice of intentional missed call. The calling party pays rule has defined the communication protocol: if you need to talk to me, you better return that call and pay for it. In brief – the rich guy pays. I’ve noted that a lot of housewives end up using this technique to make their husbands call back.

Last year LIRNE Asia published a report on the strategy of missed calls. The post showed that this strategy of missed calls is extremely common among the countries which are usually included in a group known as “bottom of the pyramid” because of the large number of low-income users. Of course the idea is to save money and missed calls is one of the common ways – sms is another.

Another interesting question to ask is that if the billing is per second (as opposed to per minute) will it reduce the number of missed calls? For the telcos who implement the sub-minute pulse, this can be a good source of revenue which might have been lost.

Here’s a recent article on this from MobileActive. The full paper is on this site by Jonathan Donner.

Missed calls are upward of 25-30% of network traffic in some markets. Operators don’t get paid for those calls or now, more often, USSD call-back messages.  Originally just a cost-saving mechanism missed calls and call-me texts have evolved to a rich communication system that people use to communicate at low cost.

Donner notes: “People use this repertoire in very nuanced ways. They know whether a missed-call means ‘call me back’, ‘pick me up’, or just ‘I’m thinking of you’.