Will Uninor new plan spark another tariff war?

A few months back, when Tata DOCOMO launched per second billing, all operators ultimately jumped onto the bandwagon and what resulted was an intensely fought tariff war. Now new entrant, Uninor has come up with the concept of "dynamic pricing". Will this mean another round of the telecom tariff wars, something that market leader Bharti Airtel recently felt was behind the industry? CNBC-TV18 Aakansha Sethi reports.

A price sensitive hyper competitive market and unutilized network capacity—what is the answer to both these problems for a telecom operator? Ask Uninor, which today offered dynamic pricing for call tariffs. Under this, users get a changing discount based on the traffic at the tower covering the call. The discount will range from 5% to 60% on a 50 paise base rate. Is this going to be the beginning of a new tariff war?

Rohit Chandra Executive Vice President (Operations), Uninor says “We have a strategy which is differentiated, haven't gone for per second billing. Model is to increase utilization, stickiness of consumer.

A differentiated price strategy may bring in users for uninor, but for a brand with a youthful-positioning, is the decision not to bid for 3g spectrum wise business strategy?

Rohit Chandra says "The market is still not ready for 3G, with enhanced edge capacities can offer all data capability"

Uninor, which is a joint venture between Norwegian group Telenor and realty player Unitech, saw subscriber additions at 708,556 in March, a 30% drop from the million plus in February. But the company says it is not worried and is on track in terms of subscriber growth targets. In fact, Uninor, which is present in eight circles will launch in the Mumbai, Kolkata, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Gujarat in 2010, and some of these launches will be as soon as this quarter.