Calling India

This post might not make too much sense, but somehow I was inclined to show the world something I did to while away my time. I called home with the Stanacard, and as usual, spoke too long, but was surprised to see that my balance was not wiped out still. I made my next call with the Reliance card, and then, started doing these calculations on the spreadsheet that was staring blankly at me until then :-).

For the novices, Reliance and StanaCard are two major service providers providing telephone connectivity from USA to India at cheaper rates. Both of them have a good customer base, being well known and reliable brands which allow users to start and manage their call-accounts online. Reliance, a household name in India, on achieving 1 million customers announced a celebration offer from December, slashing its call rates by half. StanaCard, a Russian provider, responded by doing the same with its rates.

Let me compare the actual call rates of these providers just for the sake of a comparison. Reliance claims that it will provide the service for a reduced rate of 7.4 c in the Reliance network & 7.9 c in other networks until 31-Jan. StanaCard announced their competitive rate of 7.8c for any phone, anywhere in India within a week of this announcement. I took a random call I made within the last 2-3 days using each service to arrive at this table.

	Service Provider	Date of Call	Min	$	$/min	Min/$	Min/5$	Tax/5$	Min/$ w/tax	$/min w/tax	Call Details
	Reliance Prepaid	13-Jan-07	48.633	3.871	0.080	12.564	62.818	$ 0.37	11.70	0.085	to non-reliance cell
	Stanacard	11-Jan-07	27.000	2.106	0.078	12.821	64.103	$ -	12.82	0.078	to landline
	*all numbers rounded to 3 decimals

Below are some quick points I noticed after a prolonged usage of both these services:
Reliance:
Pros : Voice Clarity, Dial a toll-free number to connect.
Cons: Public nuisance caused by PIN-less dialing (when you find during an emergency that public numbers are locked for this service by other users), Not-so-easy account management, Caller's number does not get displayed in phones in India.
Stanacard:
Pros: Ease-of-call (Smart Dial, where a number in any region of USA is mapped to any number in India, avoiding the hassles of PIN-dialling), Transaction receipts get emailed to users, Better account management, Refer friends scheme, Caller's number gets displayed for caller-id users in India.
Cons: Voice clarity is not exceptional, Toll-free numbers are costlier.
(Update, 21-Jan-2007): I got a mail from Stanacard announcing the introduction of PIN-based dialling so that unregistered phones could be used for emergency calls. From a registered phone, you never need a PIN. Since these are unregistered, I believe you won't need to fear that somebody might've locked the phone you're forced to use with his number. Stanacard has also provided access numbers to use wherever the receiver's number is unregistered.

Conclusion: If you usually dial near and dear in India using any of these services, I suggest to switch to the other one, just for that bit of diversity in an otherwise monotonous existence ;-)! True, it's the power of choice that makes a consumer's life better!