Bharti Airtel has started per-second bill plan for its prepaid mobile customers nationally, to ensure the customers pay only for the time they use the network.

“Rolled out under the new ‘Pay For What You Use’ initiative as part of the company’s ‘Customer First’ commitment, this will help ensure that customers pay only for the time they use the Airtel network,” a statement released by the company on Monday said.The move comes amid the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) examining whether there are any tariff plans by the service providers wherein call drops actually incentivise or benefit the companies. The problem of call drops has become more acute in the last 3-4 months. Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also voiced serious concern on the issue and asked officials concerned to take urgent steps to address it.

Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg had also said plans where customers get some free minutes and the billing is minute-based need to be examined.

Bharti Airtel (India and South Asia) MD and CEO Gopal Vittal had recently said about 95 per cent plans are second-based, so they don’t earn anything if a call gets dropped.

Though a large majority of its pre-paid mobile customers are already on the per-second billing plan, with this initiative, Airtel will ensure all the pre-paid base is moved to the per-second plan, the company added.

“Our customers are the reason for us to be in business, we therefore constantly introduce innovative initiatives with a commitment to deliver a world class experience to them,” Ajai Puri, director – Market Operations, Bharti Airtel (India & South Asia), said.

While customers standard base rate plans will be shifted to a pulse rate of per-second, they will have the freedom to opt for additional tariff discount packs of their choice for discounted per-second or per-minute benefits, Bharti Airtel said.

“We continue to invest in our network quality and deploy new sites to further enhance our robust and wide network presence, we are today taking the lead to move our customers to the affordable per second plans ensuring that they pay only for what they use,” Puri added.

Pre-paid customers constituted 94.4 per cent of Bharti Airtel’s total user base at the end of June 2015.

Source: BusinessToday