Skip to main content

Mooo....said the subscriber

Three of my favourite bloggers have posted statements about quality, pricing and what the telco's need to do about it.

I particularly like Martin's phrase of Telco 2.0 and what this means for the current cash-cow approach that the average Telco 1.0 operator sees as their subscriber base.

Look back at Singlepoint (a Caudwell company). They set themselves up as an MVNO with a main differentiator being cost. Buy the MOU's from T-Mobile at a discount and sell cheaper than the original MNO. They then sold the shop to Vodafone for a huge profit. The main revenue stream for them wasn't voice or line rental but handset insurance.

Now look at the present situation here in Thailand. With increasingly poor first time connection success and diminishing completed call success across networks (interconnwhat?) and a similar story within the Number 1 mobile operator, AIS, when subscribers on the same network can't connect. The frustration is starting to build within the user base.

The main operator complains that this is due to the call patterns of the users that have changed due to the price war that is in full flow between the three main players.

But what is happening? what is AIS particularly doing about the QoS issue. Very little, in fact they count their billions of Baht in revenue gleaned from monthly charges and the international roamers that pay a 28 - 33% premium for the privilege (over and above the 1600 Baht deposit supported by passport, work permit and 6 months bank statements) and do nothing to invest in more interconnect infrastructure or discount the monthly fee for inconvenience of having a phone but not being able to use it most of the time.

Just say moo and eat some more grass!.....

As Paul suggests, maybe the time has come for free On-Net calls. More and more operators are offering packages that get existing members to attract their friends, family and colleagues onto the network. Piggy back the discounts and bonus schemes with free On-Net calling and you would see a mass exodus to the network.

Then what is the real differentiator, Customer Service. I know of at least one MVNO that is looking to compete on it's brand that is basically year-on-year winner of subscriber voted best customer service.

All the pieces are on the board it's just time to make the first move.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PC over IP - The Teradici Effect

Teradici are hoping to blur the lines between PC and Data Centre. Their solution allows a use to view multiple screens and control the blade PC over IP. This is kind of like the dumb terminals with a new edgy deployment. The intention is that all of the computing power is performed offsite in a centralized area, the Data Centre, and this will save on power and maintenance costs as the engineers are co-located with the hardware and therefore don't have to go out to the client site for basic maintenance. The Teradici Company Article found in the Wall Street Journal
Post a Comment
Read more

e-Olympics

This year's Olympics should be the best ever for coverage. Fring are looking for onsite commentators and as a means to encourage people are offering a 3.5G phone as your reporters tool. I hope that this will be the games of the micro blog. The potential for services like Twitter or Jaiku to open up access to the games in a way never seen before is encouraging. Essentially there are three dimensions to the games: Nation Event Athlete Typically broadcast of the games ha content defined by the nation. The USA channels closely follow the USA squad, the same for UK, NZ Australia etc. This is targeted at the national pride. For those people who are actively engaged in an event themselves, marathon, it's the event that is king. There will still be an element of "my country" but this is equally balanced by "my sport". The final element is the followers of a specific athlete. Friends, family and fans may elect to follow all of the events surrounding a person. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cashless Society? Micropayments up for disruption

New Zealand, although small, is a long way ahead in many aspects compared to the UK. Some of their new schemes are being adopted by the UK government. What I remember from my first trip here 6 years ago was the impact of the EFTPOS system. Long before the UK was using Chip and PIN New Zealand was moving towards a cashless society with the ubiquitous EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer Point of Sale) cards and terminals. The system is good and robust. But the one place you can't find it for some of those micropayments is on the public transport system. Buses would benefit from some form of electronic payment system. There is one drawback of the system in it's implementation today, the time taking to pay. For small payments, say a Moro (think Mars) Bar at the local dairy (corner shop) is the time taken for the system to recognise the card and for the user to select the account (Cheque, Savings or Card) and input their PIN. This would certainly slow down the boarding process...
Post a Comment
Read more