Stretching the rupee to the maximum

We Indians are adept at the art of stretching every rupee to the maximum and extracting
the maximum possible value from any resource. Is it any wonder that we have applied the
same to mobile phones also ?

Mobile phone rates in India are currently among the lowest in the world. Handsets are also available at very low rates. Mobile penetration and usage is increasing by the day. Just look around you and I can bet that out of every 10 people in a public place, atleast 5 are yapping
on their mobile. Gone are the days of the brick-heavy handsets and Rs.17 per minute rates
(for incoming calls also, if you remember).

Inspite of all this, Indian ingenuity can be seen in how we use the system, but without paying
a single paise and still be within the law. This ingenuity comes in the form of "missed calls".
A missed call does not cost either the caller or receiver anything, but could convey a lot
based on some pre-decided protocol between the caller and receiver.

I personally am a very low phone user. I hate being on the phone - landline or otherwise. Nothing to do with phones per se. It's just that I do not talk much. Ofcourse, past a few
pegs, I open up, smile and horror of horrors even laugh out loud. Strange are the ways of
alcohol. :-)

Anyway, coming back to the point, "missed calls" are a great way for people like me to communicate without actually talking to someone at the other end. I use missed calls
almost on a daily basis. Mainly to communicate with my car pool partner. I car pool to
work with my colleague who lives some 5 kms down the road to our office.

The arrangement is that he walks to the main road, from where I pick him up. To avoid
either of us having to wait for the other, we use missed calls. It takes me some 20 minutes
to reach his place. Just as I leave home, I give him a missed call on his mobile. So he knows
that in 20 odd minutes from the time of my missed call, I will be there. Not a bad way to synchronise timings without spending even a penny. I am sure the mobile phone companies would not really be pleased with this arrangement, though there is nothing they can do
about it.

While caller identification helps a lot in us being able to use the "missed call" feature in cellphones for pre-determined communication, I am not sure whether anyone tried using
the land phones in a similar manner. I do remember one of my sister's friends using the
landline in a similar manner. She used to call her friends on their landline and hang up after
2-3 rings, which according to her was what she did when she thought of them. So, when her friends got such a missed call, they could know that they were being remembered at that moment.

Quite affectionate and caring, you would say. But to me it was really an irritating thing,
because when you hear the phone ringing, you would leave what you were doing to attend
to it, but by the time you reach the phone, it has stopped ringing. You can imagine how
someone would feel after a few such attempts. I finally had my sister tell her friend to stop
this irritating way of remembering her.

Not sure if people in other countries also use "missed call" communication like us. Never
heard any of my friends in the US or Europe mentioning it. But quite possible that people elsewhere are also using this in their own ingenious ways.