“PRANKING is a common occurrence among many young Australians, who may have enough money for a mobile phone but find themselves short on credit to make calls.” – from /news.com.au

http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,22485868-5006544,00.html for the full story.

However, I believe this can be changed to revenue if operators can introduce “per second billing”. Per minute billing which is common among most of the operators charge the user for a minute irrespective of call duration. So by introducing “per second billing” people will make 10-20 second calls where if the charge is Rs. 2/- per min they will pay something like 30-40Cts for a short call. This will enable to pass important emergency messages at the lowest cost like “my father passed away please come back to village soon, and the funeral is tomorrow” can be perhaps delivered within 10 seconds with the lowest cost. As mentioned in the above report if someone POOR is calling another POOR person the ring cut will not be effective to deliver a message. However, if it’s per second billing people will make the call to deliver the important message. So if operators are thinking of converting “ring cuts” into paid revenue they should introduce “per second billing” which has greater potential to convert “ring cuts” to paid revenue.

Even with per second billing am sure people will still continue at least some level of beeping or ring-cuts for pre-defined messages such as “come back to main gate”, “call me back”, “I am here” etc. But who knows all this could change to paid revenue through per second billing!!