Is MTNL scared of competition?

Nope, says the big bosses of the corporation. "Let the private players come and start their services. Basic services is not easy. Unless they have the volumes, they will not be profitable. Private players will only target the corporates which are cream of telecom users. Look at Hughes in Mumabi servicing only the commercial segment."

MTNL CMD, Narendra Sharma is confident that the corporation with 4 million subscribers in the two metros would be one up on competition in every way. "We have 73 customer care centers and a large bouquet of services to offer--basic, cellular, video conferencing, CLI and so on."

Nobody doubts the corporation's achievement in terms of its assets and reach but there is certainly a lot desired in it marketing and customer-care services. The ground level activities in recent times of the corporation indicate that MTNL mandarins have also realized this. Competition, or at least the very mention of it, has done a world of good to the outlook of the officialdom. In anticipation of the private operators launching their basic services in the metros, MTNL has undertaken a major revamp of its marketing and customer care services. From increasing its reach and visibility to better interface with customers the latest initiatives by the service provider are welcome signs for hapless customers who have long become used to the rude behavior of MTNL employees.

First, in a bid to improve its brand equity MTNL has invited bids from leading advertising agencies to pitch for its media buying business. Till now it has received bids from 34 advertising agencies but will shortlist one to coordinate all its media buying activities and generate synergies of scale. The company will soon step up its brand building activities by launching an aggressive print and outdoor media campaign. MTNL's strategy of appointing an Agency on Records is in line with the strategy of other corporates who hire an independent AOR for its media buying exercise.

Among the many campaigns that the new agency will have to promote, a major mandate will be to popularize its new pre-paid cellular service branded as Trump. To be launched in the first week of January, the new service could possibly be priced at Rs 2.60 per minute for outgoing calls and Rs 2 per minute for incoming calls. Officials declined to comment on the new tariff structure but a new price war is on the cards since officials state that the new service will be "very affordable".

Another very interesting project up MTNL's sleeve is to launch branded pay phones which would allow the user to use credit cards to make STD and ISD calls as well as access the Internet. The project is currently at its pilot stage with 50 machines being deployed at various places in Mumbai and Delhi. Says PK Saha, General Manager, Marketing, "If the pilot succeeds, we will get into branding and marketing these machines in a big way".

These hi-tech machines will be positioned as unmanned Internet kiosks ideal for airports, hotels, clubs, and hospitals. The Internet pay phones are being imported from Canada with the maintenance undertaken by ITI. MTNL provides the lines besides the capital expenditure. The machines are fitted with magnetic cards which will accept Visa and Master cards. MTNL has tied up with Standard Chartered Bank to do the online authentication of the customer's credit card. Standard Chartered has given each of the installed machines a unique authentication number and has also set up a credit card server which does the checking.

Elaborating further about its initiatives to extend its marketing reach, Saha says that MTNL is looking at increasing its reach among customers. "We want to increase our agents in Delhi to at least 300 this year which currently stands at 90 agents. We are also looking at upgrading all the 49 customer service centers to Sanchar Haats." Currently MTNL has 29 Sanchar Haats in the city. The move to increase its presence in the city is expected to make its services more accessible to the citizens.

Despite the impressive number of subscribers that MTNL caters to in its basic telephony services, its record of customer care falls woefully behind. But if MTNL manages to pull off its slew of initiatives catering to customer care, it will gain much more than all the money spent on its brand building. Some of its new initiatives include a phone on phone service to reduce procedural bottlenecks in getting a new connection; complete automation of its billing system to overcome frequent complains of inaccurate billing; bill payment through Internet and through many more commercial banks including their ATM counters; and putting in place an improved fault management system to bring down the number of faults