Uninor today announced the commercial launch of its prepaid voice and SMS GSM service in Gujarat circle. Uninor is 10th mobile company to enter in Gujarat circle.

The company has today launched only voice and SMS services. The GPRS, data, Post paid and other value added services will be launched in coming months. Uninor has put its signal instruments on Tata’s towers in most of the parts of the state presently. The company assured coverage in most of the parts of the state and also on highway. The main attraction of Uninor service is its tarrif which includes flat 50 paisa call charge per minute for all local and national calls. Flat rate of SMS is 25 paisa.

Moreover Uninor has offered radical new concept of Dynamic Pricing (DP). Branded as ‘24X7 Badalta Discount Plan’, Uninor will offer call discounts that will change from 5% to 60% with location and with time – with each cell phone tower broadcasting a different discount. At the same location, the discount will change every hour.

This means, if you are in an area where the tower is less utilized, you would get more discount for call initiated from that tower. If you are in an area where the local tower connected with your mobile is more busy, you would get less discount. The discount offer in particular area will flash on your mobile. Suppose you are in area “A”, your mobile phone screen will show: “40% discount”, and if you are in area “B”, it will show “5% discount”. If you dial a call from area “A” and continuing that call if you move ahead to area “B”, you will be charged discounted rate of area “A”. If the tower of your area is utilized more at 18:00 hour, you will get less discount in that hour at that place, but if in same area, at same place, the same tower is less utilized at suppose 23:00 hours, then you will get higher discount at that time. This scheme will be applicable to all local calls.

Discounts are calculated by an intelligent ‘Discount Engine’ that relies on state-of-the-art IT systems to continuously monitor traffic at every tower in the network. Applicable discounts based on real time network traffic at every individual tower are broadcast to all mobile phone screens under the coverage of that tower. The system also ensures that the discount at which a call is originated is maintained through the duration of the call – even if the customer moves from the coverage of that tower to the next.

Under the ‘24X7 Badalta Discount Plan (DP)’, customers will be able to avail a discount on their calls that ranges from 5% to as much as 60%, depending on their location and time at which they call – so simply by crossing a street, at the next local station or 1 hour later at the same location. This discount will be applicable on a standard base call rate of 50 paisa per minute for any local call, Uninor-to-Uninor or Uninor-to-any other operator. This means a 1-minute local call could cost as low as 20 paisa and never more than 50 paisa.

“With its own network in 13 of the largest states in India and pan-India roaming already tied up, Uninor customers in Gujarat will be on a national mobile network from day one,” said Mr. Olav Sande, Executive Vice-President, Mumbai Hub. Olav said, Uninor is JV of Telenor(Norway) and Unitech(India). He said he treats Gujarat as a country and India as continent, because Gujarat is larger than many nations including Norway from where Telenor and he himself is.”Even Ahmedabad’s population is more than Norway,” he added.

“Uninor’s network is brand new with the most modern equipment and the very latest IT systems. It’s a congestion free network powered by the latest technology anyone can deploy today. For customers, this will mean superior voice quality, less call drops, maximum first attempt dials and a much better experience overall on our network,” said Rajiv Bawa, Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Uninor.