Prepaid mobile phones are popular in emerging markets, due to their lower cost in comparison to post-paid contracts.[1][2] 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.[5][4] Missed calls also bypass the language barrier, since they do not require voice or text to be transmitted.[4][5] Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode professor of marketing management Keyoor Purani remarked that missed calls are an "economical and wide-reaching mechanism of communication."[4]