Vodacom in South Africa offers an advertising-paid, free to subscribers, Please Call Me (PCM) service that allows one mobile subscriber to ask another mobile subscriber to initiate a mobile call--South African mobile callers are charged for calls, while call recipients talk for free. To request a call, subscribers dial *140*TARGETNUMBER, where TARGETNUMBER is the number of the person being asked to place the call.
This service is similar to international "call back" services and South African "beeping" practices. International call back is a service designed to reduce international charges between countries with disparate international telecommunications tariffs. To use an international call back service, a person in country where outgoing calls are expensive who wants to speak to someone in a country where outgoing calls are less expensive, dials a number in the low cost country, hangs up, and awaits a "call back" from the service in the low cost country. The user is then able to "conference in" others in the low cost country. South African beeping is the practice whereby mobile subscribers with zero mobile balances call subscribers with positive mobile balances, immediately hang up, and await a call back.
With the PCM service, the target subscriber receives a text message with the message "Please Call Me," the number to be called, and an advert. Mobile subscribers have the option to turn off receipt of PCM messages. Vodacom reports having over 2.4 million unique users each day and that between 18 and 20 million messages are delivered per day across networks.
-Stuart Whitaker
Thursday, April 30, 2009
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