Mobitel MTunes - An Expensive Way to Entertain Your Callers

Becoming the fourth and last to introduce similar service in Sri Lanka, Mobitel launched their ringin tone service under the brand name of Mobitel M Tunes. Dialog was the first to introduce "RingIn Tones" to Sri Lankan mobile users and later it was followed by Hutch under "Hello Tunes" brand and Tigo under "Call-A-Tune". At present Dialog is the only provider which has enabled it's users to listen and select songs online.All other providers require their users to activate this service via an IVR. Tigo users have to dial *336 to activate and assign songs in Call-A-Tune where Hutch users need to dial 369 for Hello Tunes and Mobitel users 777.
Among these four networks it seems Mobitel is the most expensive due to several reasons. First thing is Mobitel charges RS 3 + VAT per minute to call 777.You can imagine how much will it cost to select a song from among 100s using a IVR.The other thing is there is a daily rental of Rs 5 +VAT for this M Tunes service which will end up in adding an overhead of about Rs 190 for your monthly mobile expenditure. In all other networks it costs about half of this amount.
These Value Added Services (VAS) should be a way of attracting users to the network inside this highly competitive mobile arena, not pick pocketing from customers.