100 Days In Wireless Wonderland

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One Sunday afternoon when I was telling my daughter, “no more
television” , she shot back,  but tell him first (him being , my
son, who was playing a game on my husband's mobile)  to stop
“screening”. I was a bit confused before it suddenly struck me that she
was talking about the experience and not the format. It dawned on me
that they now looked at it as 'screen time' and not just TV time and in
this context the possibilities of what all mobility could mean to this
generation. Having now spent a little over three months in the telecom
sector, I am struck with awe, the scale, the workings and the dynamism
of this 'in transition' industry feels surreal.



Of course, let me clearly state that what you read ahead is from an
industry novice and a ring side view of the happenings. Needless to say
it could have a heavy dose of idealism. But I couldn't stop myself from
penning this down. Telecom in India is an industry whose pace of growth
is frightening, where 'because of' and 'in spite of' heavy regulatory
pressure the action continues. I have observed consumers across FMCG,
Healthcare, Home products and durables but am yet to see such dynamism
and complexity in behavior, easily the most challenging consumer
behavior ever in my opinion.



As I look back on my last 100 days of being a part of this industry,
there are thoughts that I would like to share. A few observations and
peculiarities of this wireless wonderland



Consumer participation and
involvement: There is intense level of involvement, not only
because the players are pushing action in the market but also because
the consumer is participating whole heartedly, sometimes following and
sometimes leading marketers. So the Indian consumer, who cracked the
code of expensive washing powder for office clothes and cheap one for
everyday clothes, is using his own homegrown logic even on telecom
products. The sheer creativity with which usage is planned, by way of
multiple service brand SIMS, using missed calls, SMSs and separate SIMs
for incoming and outgoing calls, it's astounding.



The paradox of the being one of the most talkative nations  and at
the same time most value conscious, consumers  in no other market
would have used such home grown street smart wisdom to get the best
value possible every day in every possible way.



Constantly changing consumer context:
In most industries new consumers come in with varied expectations
depending on their context of the category. Telecom has the most
diverse set of consumers, ones who have been mobile since a decade and
hence have a different context and expectation vs. consumers who are
born in the lap technology and expect the world at the best price. It
is a challenge for marketers to be able to meet such a diverse set of
needs. Where the 30plus consumer expects to pay more for smart services
and the 20 plus expects it to be 'ofcourse available' at an affordable
cost.



What is advanced to one consumer is basic to another, and hence the
logic of 'more advanced, more expensive'  that operates in other
industries is likely to be challenged, especially since players want to
encourage usage of services other than voice. So now you can buy a bag
of chips or surf the net for two days in the same money.



Law and loyalty: An industry
that has too much of a regulated environment to breathe easy, it is
impacted from all sides, revenues, offering design and distribution.
The industry is almost pushed in the direction of downgrading the
market under the excuse of 'fast growth'. The scale of the commercials
of this industry has put tremendous pressure prompting players to do
tactical short term initiatives and get quick wins, but this could
become huge challenge in the long term. Prepaid sims helped hugely to
expand the market but while all were busy trying to match a bag of
chips price point in the acquisition game, they forgot to value add and
give any meaningful reason for the post paid consumer to stay. In fact
with fixed rentals, post paid service is quite the contrary and not
surprising that only a very small percentage of the market comprises
committed users. It's quite possible that soon consumers will actually
get paid to make calls.



Bottomless price wars, government policies and regulations that change
stance frequently, to add  increasing competition, number
portability and low loyalty the market has set an 'extreme conditions'
stage to perform on.



Consumer and market research:
It is quite a task to research this market, by the time research
findings are available, the dynamics of the market could have changed
dramatically. The consumer base could be totally different and the
assumptions thereof challenged. One more market intervention in form of
new technology, one more new handset, one more new plan etc could
change the dynamics completely making the findings rather redundant.



Real time research that is predictive and not descriptive is what would
really help.



Last but not the least, an incestuous industry it has people and
sometimes teams who have been there and done that with other brands.
They belong and almost have such deep tacit understanding that once you
get them talking you realize how much knowledge isn't documented. They
have worked on consumer bases that are possibly equal to the sum of the
population of a few European countries.And of course the industry
insiders use a language that cannot be understood by lay people, an
outsider has to crack the lingo of the industry to comprehend any
discussion. Most of it is in acronyms (seriously there are times when
the entire sentence is made up of acronyms, sample this: “ARPU of REC
is from VAS, CRBT ,WPDL” Phew, how on earth is one to understand ? And
for my telecom friends who are thinking hard about what is WPDL, there
is nothing called WPDL, I was just being wicked (Wall Paper Down Loads,
may be)