Mar 22, 2004 11:16 PM
2120 Views
(Updated Mar 23, 2004 12:35 AM)
A few days before, I found that my mobile phone had accidentally got switched off. On rebooting it, I got an SMS from my service provider, Orange, informing me that I'd missed 3 calls between 3:17PM to 3:36PM and in order to recieve information about the callers, I'd to reply back in some given format. Impressed by this new innovation in technology, I did so and got the requisite information.
To my amazement, the next day I got another SMS informing me that I'd missed a call (in some time duration mentioned alongwith). I was sure that my phone had been neither off nor busy during that period. Dismissing it as some network problem at the Base Station end, that apparently made me unavailable to the caller, I replied to the SMS.
However, after a few friends (subscribed to Orange) told me of similar experiences (i.e. their mobile phones being ON and showing comfortable network levels and still, SMSs of missed calls being relayed to them), I realised that something was fishy. Consequently, I've come up with the following modus-operandi that I believe that Orange could have been employing to trick & charge unnecessarily from their customers.
The Base Station targets a cellphone at random, and so a person (lets call him/her as 'X') trying to reach you is told that your phone is unavailable, even though you might have been available.
You receive the SMS that you'd missed call(s) in certain time duration.
You either delete the SMS and go on your way.... End of Story! But in case you reply to the SMS and get the information, chances are that you might call back X (and probably other people as well) too.
Statistically speaking, even if 5 out of 10 people respond to the SMS and 2 out of those 5 make a call back, Orange makes a very neat profit. For numbers sake, assuming that transmission of the SMS from the Base Station is as cheap as 20 paisa and calling back to 'X' consumes a talktime of Rs. 10 on average, the profits from this shady gimmick would come out to be around
30 rupees (52.00 + 210.00 - 100.20 - 50.20= 27.00) per 10 people. With consumer bases of a few lakhs, this (still quite a conservative estimate!) in actual would translate to pretty decent profits......
It does sound wierd, but it is possible!
-nitin
