Missed call

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,^[1][2] flashing in Nigeria,^[3] a flashcall in Pakistan,^[4] miskol in the Philippines and ring-cut in Sri Lanka.^[5]

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.