Telenor Launches Services in India Date:   Tuesday , December 29, 2009 Telenor, the Norwegian telecom firm, has launched its services in seven of the 22 mobile zones in India amidst an intense tariff war in the world’s fastest growing wireless market. The company says that it would charge 29 paise per minute for local calls and 49 paise for national long distance calls, staying away from a per-second billing plan that most mobile operators have recently adopted. Telenor has launched its services under the Uninor brand. Intense competition has been driving drastic cuts in call charges in India. Tata Teleservices was the first to launch per-second billing earlier this year, deviating from the industry norm of per-minute billing. The offer was a roaring success. The mobile services leaders Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, and Vodafone Essar have all followed suit to launch the per-second billing, which analysts say will significantly dent the profit margins.