Telecom market is showing dynamic growth

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 which feels surreal.

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.

As I look back on my last hundred 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
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, 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.

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 of 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 thirty plus consumer expects to pay more for smart services and the twenty plus expects it to be 'of course 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 with 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 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. Pre-paid 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 add value and give any meaningful reason for the post-paid consumer to stay. In fact with fixed rentals, post-paid service is quite 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.

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. And of course the industry insiders use a language that cannot be understood by lay people, an outsider has to crack the language of the industry to comprehend any discussion.

Dr Anupama Wagh Koppar
The author is head, customer segmentation, TATA Teleservices
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in