MOBILE SERVICES: The Festivals Went Quietly

Consumers had budgeted for new cell pho- ne connections. But the subscriber
num- bers shown by various associations do not report the expected growth this
festive season.

There are various reasons why the consumer pull in festive November (Diwali)
and December (Christmas) was not created.

According to consumers and dealers, there were no special schemes or deals
available for November and December, when all other end-consumer products come
with attractive offers to lure those on-the-edge consumers, who are likely to
spend during the festive season if not at other times of the year.

October, November, and December (OND) are laced with festivals, marriages,
and other celebrations and new cell phone subscriptions form an integral part of
these celebrations.

According to Ajay Mathur, general manager, marketing, Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra)
(TTML) the operators were busy rolling out into new circles, ramping up the
infrastructure, and offering other attractive services. He says, TTML was
gearing up for push-to-talk services and their focus for the last few months was
only on taking that service to the customers.

But, somehow the operators were not able to weave the festival magic to add
to the subscription numbers.

Statistics compiled by TRAI show that the addition to the subscriber base in
October 2003 was 1.67 million, which grew to 1.90 in November 2003, whereas in
October 2004 the addition was 1.52 million and touched 1.54 million in November
2004. This clearly indicates a clear miss of opportunity for market growth.
Where the subscriber base had added 1.95 million in July 2004, the OND quarter
did not see similarly impressive figures.

During the first eight months of current financial year, about 12.50 million
mobile subscribers were added, making it a total of 46 million mobile
subscribers in November 2004.

Kobita Desai, principal analyst for Gartner's mobile services and public
network services group said that while reporting the subscriber figures, churn
rates are now taken into consideration. The figures reported now are therefore
lower, when compared with the statistics made available in earlier months.

Statistics notwithstanding, there is no indication that the market reported
any impressive growth; the month of November did not show any traction and that
is an area of concern for the market.

There were a large number of handsets launched, catering to various segments
of the market. This created lot of opportunity in the market, but there were no
bundled offers, schemes, or deals to attract the new subscribers by any of the
operators.

As it is, the operators who play the most important role in the entire value
chain say that they have to multi-task. They have to reach out to the remotest
areas, enter new circles, create innovative services, and look at market
opportunities (all at once) to add those much-desired numbers.

Jayant Khosla, CEO, Bharti Cellular concurs that clearly there was an
opportunity missed and the operators had their focus digressed to other task
like getting into newer circles and creating services on data and content to
influence their ARPUs.

As a result, there was no dhamaka in the market nor did we hear any Christmas
bells ring in this festive season.

Minu Sirsalewala