Of late night packages

So, the PTA has decided to ban all kinds of late night packages that go beyond the middle of the night. Reading Chairman PTA’s comments on the matter, the temptation to draw parallels between smoking cannabis and late night communication is overwhelming. He claims that the late night mobile packages are wasting our youth’s time, diminishing their mental faculties and leading to social degeneration.
Late night packages may have been cultivating a bunch of Romeos, but no radicals or terrorists. It appears that there will be no free lunches (free midnight meals rather) for some time, as the discounted late night call rates, that have been frowned upon by some segments of the society, remain no more on offer.
While PTA’s decision to proscribe late night packages has emphatically mocked the lovebirds among the lot, the mobile network operators shouldn’t wail too much. This directive will save them on a whole lot of advertising spend. The decision has effectively flattened the competitive turf in the hyper-active segment of youth, in time slots during which the MNOs have been ferociously battling for share of voice and texts.
With late night packages withdrawn, the voice tariffs may somewhat stabilise in the near term. However, an interesting scenario unravels when this decision is viewed in conjunction with two other recent directives from the telecom watchdog.
On the Interior Ministry’s directions, PTA imposed an immediate ban on the mobile number portability service on November 14. Another directive this month barred the MNOs from selling new Sims through franchises, customer service centres and retailers starting December 1. Issued only against CNIC or driving license, new Sims will be sent by the MNOs directly to the customers’ residential addresses.
While the two measures have supposedly been taken by the authorities to improve law enforcement based on their own (one hopes, informed) vision and narrative, these actions can prove damaging for the telecom sector. For instance, the looming closedown of telecom franchises means that the livelihoods of thousands of households are at stake, while illegal Sims remain at large.
Formidable switching barriers have been installed because customers cannot use MNP service and port out of their mobile service to other operators. It will become harder to obtain a new Sim in the future. That decreases the customers’ choices. Tough luck for some post-midnight callers – this sort of status quo effectively trumps their tried-and-tested tariff beating strategy of ‘switch and mix’ across multiple networks.
Yet there is a grave underlying connotation to this latest PTA directive. It has been suggested that these late night packages have been violating social norms and values of Pakistan. Who gets to define the acceptable norms, by the way? While PTA is within its rights to issue sector-related directives, it should drop the idea of moral policing because it is under no obligation to issue ethical judgments.
The Chairman PTA has stated that by abolishing late night packages, the regulator is ensuring users’ safety. Perhaps, a more meaningful service to the users would be to jumpstart the stalled 3G auction process. Or, at the very least, it should take strong measures to protect users from sms spamming that has become a constant nuisance. But hey, that would require some real work to be done…