And their mobiles are usually really good models too - better than mine most of the time. It's stuff like this that gives me hope that India is getting upwardly mobile [ excuse the pun :-) ].
For example, there is this startup that strips and forwards email from lets say gmail, yahoo etc to an email associated with the cell phone number as an SMS for a very low price. SMS seems to be a very viable and inexpensive solution to target a large user base.
http://in.rediff.com/money/2007/jan/10mobile.htm http://money.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?sid=10&cid=13...
"Bharti Airtel is investing $2 billion in 2006-07 to ensure the 'death of distance', which, hopefully, will further bring down call charges by 15-20 per cent. Moreover, with sharing of infrastructure among operators and the reduced burden of revenue sharing for universal access service licence (UASL), basic and cellular mobile service providers will lower operating costs and the benefits may again be passed on to the consumer.
Bottomline: If you pay Re 1 a minute for a local call today, you may have to pay 80 paise for the same tomorrow. Talk is cheap, tech is chief."
Thats a 20% reduction in margin.
I've just checked around though, and it doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on many people's bills (at least in my office). Maybe we compensate by calling more or longer.