Indians prefer phone calls to SMS

Mumbai: For people in India, making a call has become the best option to connect, while other countries like to use the SMS to convey their message. 86 percent of Indians had either made or received a call in the past three months but Filipinos have not made or received a single phone call for the same period, instead they prefer the SMS.

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The basic reason behind the preference of calls to SMS is the cost factor. The average tariff in India for local calls is Re 1, the same as the local SMS rate, while for STD calls, the average tariff is 1.50 and the SMS rate is higher at Rs 2. Thus, SMS tariffs are either higher than voice rates or at best comparable, which makes the latter more lucrative.

"The phone patterns in countries like Thailand and the Philippines are also very different as compared to, say, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh," says Rohan Samarajiva, Chairman and CEO of Lirneasia and a former Srilankan telecom regulator told The Times of India. These findings are the result of a Sri Lankan study titled Teleuse@BOP 08-09 conducted by Asian ICT think-tank Lirneasia, which spanned across Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand. The study surveyed close to 10,000 people from the low-income or Bottom of Pyramid group (earning less than $38 a month). In India, it was around 10 cities which were surveyed.

The cell phones are also rapidly penetrating in the market, as 36 percent of those surveyed in India owns a mobile. Many people had also been introduced to the Internet via the cell phone. The usage of phone also differs when it comes to different gender like women who do not own mobile phones are inclined to borrow from relatives and neighbors to make a call, but men would rather head to a PCO. Moreover, the women of different countries have different attitude towards the usage of phone. Women in Pakistan hardly ever use public phone booths, while women in India are more confident about public spaces.