Bucket Pricing

Mar 13, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lankan fixed access telco, Lanka Bell has started two packages with batches of free outgoing minutes, intensifying competition in the fixed telephony sector, with market oriented pricing strategies, officials said. It has started a 1,000-minutes-free package for 999 rupees branded 'Infinity Plus', where the customer can call any time of the day and a 400-minutes-free package for 399 rupees branded 'Infinity'.

"These new packages will give them hundreds of free minutes to talk to a community of more than one million Lanka Bell users and to subscribers of any other mobile or fixed line network," Lanka Bell managing director Prasad Samarasinghe said in a statement.

The 400-minutes-free package is applicable between 11.00 pm in the night and 5.00 pm the next day. Sri Lanka has an evening 'residential peak'.

"This shows that the fixed sector is entering the more modern competitive phase," says Rohan Samarajiva, head of the LirneAsia a think tank, who was a former Sri Lanka telco regulator.

"Market oriented and demand driven bucket pricing is emerging, with features for protecting the peak."

Sri Lanka's mobile sector was the first to use 'bucket pricing' where buckets of minutes with a time limit