Opinion | A land of missed calls and revised deadlines

Cell phone users in India must sharpen their reflexes, now that telecom service providers have reduced the ringing limit for outgoing calls to 25 seconds. The sounds that alert us to incoming calls are not exactly costless. Every ring eats up radio frequency, and Indian telecom companies cannot be faulted for wanting to move towards international standards, particularly after the telecom regulator flagged the issue last month. A majority view in favour of rings that last 30 seconds, though, was lost in a haze once Reliance Jio set the cut-off limit for its outgoing calls to 25 seconds, and its rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea followed suit. Such a short ring duration lends itself to accusations of being designed to induce call backs from call recipients who are unable to respond in time. Under a “calling party pays” framework, an operator that originates a call must pay a termination fee to the network that answers. This means a net gain is made if more calls come in than go out to other networks.