Virgin set to capatalise on MNP

After a successful run in South India and Orissa, Virgin Mobile has now launched its GSM services in Maharashtra. Talking about the launch in an exclusive with select media, Jamie Heywood, deputy CEO — India, Virgin Mobile said, “As GSM is where a larger portion of the total mobile subscriber base lies, this is a great opportunity to stake the success of our CDMA offerings and build on them in GSM; the goal being to take these opportunities and make them available to a larger audience.”

With this in mind, Virgin is building on its VAS, which accounts for 9-10 per cent of its revenues, offering three new schemes, namely 20p per minute anywhere in India tariff, available for both CDMA and GSM subscribers, as well as Virgin to other cells at 40p, and Virgin to landlines at 50p, which presents a 200 per cent saving, as compared to other operators.

Secondly, with the popularity of mobile social networking growing, Virgin has launched 'Friends Circle', wherein one can enter subscriber details and social networking sites preferences once and the same gets saved on the mobile, instantly available every time one connects. With the vGenie service, customers can analyse and monitor social networks and provide updates. Other VAS include vBelong — where group members can design and create their own WAP sites for their group; vJingle-which offers free tunes, and others.

“Thirdly, in order to establish ourselves as a trusted service provider, one can log on to our website and get a free itemised bill. We also provide a bill guarantee, under which if any item billed is incorrect, we will not only refund the customer, but also pay for the previous month's bill, thus ensuring transparency of operations,” remarked Heywood. These last two postpaid services will be offered free till March-end as a promotional run, after which a daily price of Rs 2 will be attached to it.

Operating under the TTSL umbrella, Virgin subscribers in other parts of India can avail of GSM services using Tata infrastructure, and Virgin hopes to roll out services cross country by the year-end.

According to Heywood, “We intend to spend Rs 500 Cr over the next six months to make the GSM launch a success. With the ensuing tariff war, companies that survive will have to manage costs and revenues, with added scalability, by offering more minutes on their network, and by sharing technology infrastructure between numbers, thus optimising revenue through segmented offerings and increased VAS. In this context, Virgin's current partnership with Tata will see us through this difficult time.”

Talking about MNP and the numbers game, Heywood was happy about achieving the five million subscriber mark in six months, well ahead of the original goal that had been set in March 2008.

“MNP in other markets is unleashed by competitors, i.e. operators. MNP is a great thing, and should happen quickly. As of now, customers are not free to change operators due to mobile number hurdles, but MNP will change all that. The churn will increase, and this provides a great opportunity for us, as a small operator. We intend to continue with our offerings of innovative and relevant services, targeting a single group of users and delivering specifically to their needs, which we believe is the key to helping operators hold margins.”

Talking about growth and data services, Heywood mentioned that the next two years would be crucial for India. “GSM will have arrived and price points on smart handsets will have come down significantly, which would signal a huge growth in data services, which is currently the trend in foreign markets,” he says. In such times, he believes it is important to thus stay focused on a particular segment and invest in application development and R&D.

Virgin has already tied up with Hungama and Sony BMG for more choice in music, both Bollywood and international. It is further looking at an applications store model or an open model and is also open to outsourcing. Having launched its V-Flash HSIA services offering 20 times faster speed of up to 3.1 Mbps over a month ago with wireless broadband - and having seen what a huge opportunity this presents - as compared to fixed broadband penetration which is lower in India, in the next 18-24 months, Virgin will be concentrating on improving these offerings as well.

Talking about the handset segment, Heywood said that while Virgin would continue launching its CDMA handsets, it would now also try and provide lower-priced handsets for its GSM customers, according to their needs and market fluctuations.