A missed call is a telephone call that is deliberately terminated by the caller before being answered by its intended recipient, in order to communicate a pre-agreed message. It is a form of one-bit messaging.
Missed calls are common in emerging markets where mobile phones with limited outgoing calls are widely used; as the call is not actually completed and connected, it does not carry a cost to the caller, hence they can conserve their remaining prepaid credit. Specific patterns of consecutive missed calls have been developed in some countries to denote specific messages. Missed calls are also referred to in some parts of Africa as beeping, flashing in Nigeria, a flashcall in Pakistan, miskol in the Philippines and ring-cut in Sri Lanka.
Missed calls are especially prominent in India. Expanding upon their use as a communications method, they have been adopted as a form of marketing communications, in which users can "missed call" specific numbers and receive a call or text back that contains advertising and other content. Other forms of services have also been built around use of missed calls in such a manner, primarily to take advantage of the fact that feature phones are still relatively common in India as opposed to smartphones.
Justification and impact
Prepaid mobile phones are popular in emerging markets, due to their lower cost in comparison to post-paid contracts. Prepaid plans have a limited number of minutes allotted for outgoing calls; as a missed call does not connect, they can be used to convey communications without consuming outgoing phone credit. Missed calls also bypass the language barrier, since they do not require voice or text to be transmitted. Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode professor of marketing management Keyoor Purani remarked that missed calls are an "economical and wide-reaching mechanism of communication."
In countries where missed calling is common, some wireless carriers have shown concerns that the practice uses their networks in a manner they cannot derive revenue from. In August 2005, a Kenyan mobile operator estimated that four million missed calls were placed on their network daily. In 2006, industry estimates indicated that 20–25% of mobile calls in India were missed calls. In 2007, the Cellular Operators Association of India announced that it would conduct a study on the effects of missed calls on Indian mobile networks.
"Miskol", a Tagalog loanword for "miss call", was declared the "word of the year" at a language convention held by the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2007.
Use cases
Social usage
The information communicated by a missed call is pre-agreed and contextual in nature. They are typically used to signal the sender's status, such as indicating their arrival at a specific destination, or a business informing a customer that their order is ready for pickup. In some countries, patterns have been established to indicate specific messages; in Bangladesh, two missed calls in a row is considered an indication that someone is running late, and in Syria, five missed calls in a row is considered a signal that the sender wishes to chat online. Young couples miscall one another to see if the line is free, or to intentionally keep the line busy. In Africa there are established norms for how missed calls are used, such as for indicating who should call back with a voice call (and thus, bear the responsibility of paying for it).
One-bit messaging apps such as Yo (which is only capable of sending the word "Yo" to other contacts) have been compared to the social practice of missed calls.
Marketing and services
Missed calls have been adopted as a method of mobile permission marketing, known as missed call marketing (MCM). MCM campaigns take advantage of how cellular providers may offer unlimited incoming calls and text messages: advertisements contain an instruction for customers to place a missed call at a specific number. The number may be configured to automatically hang up on the caller when dialed. The number then calls or texts back with supplemental content, such as product information, offers, or sponsored celebrity messages. Advertisers can retain the phone numbers of callers to build a customer database, which can be used for future engagement and analytics.