Telecomwatch, a fast growing ‘Telecom Publishing House’ in India has recently published the ‘Telecom Survey of Month-Feb10’. The summary, dubbed as TelecomWatch Online SurveyFeb`10, has questionnaire which mainly focuses on the issues pertaining to Telecom India. Though it’s not yet clear how survey results are going to impact our understanding of Telecom India, there’re some issues which are still less understood and more misunderstood. And we are here to take a brief note of it!
Telecomwatch has long list of quality publications to their credit. I have been using one of their quality data reports on ‘Telecom Tariffs’ since last two years and often recommended subscription to many other colleagues in telecom fraternity. Now coming back to survey results : Not a single surveyed user thinks that restricting 3G license to few operators (unlike 10-12 in case of 2G), may impact cost proposition of 3G services & result into market dominance of legacy 2G players. Perhaps, this has already been taken as thumb rule globally- restrict number of players in each area of operation to 4-5. Survey results mere highlight the same fact.
Another area explored in this survey was about Tariffs. This is where lots of misunderstanding creeps in. Though, Telecomblogs has already reported the same in earlier posts, there’s wider ignorance towards issues of per-sec-billing. Almost all of them agree to the fact that per-sec-billing will change the telecom scenario, there’s little indication on whether such scenario will be termed as negative spiral of events or positive. Same goes with CAPEX/OPEX rollouts of telcos in light of per-sec-billing & increased competition in each telecom circle. Almost 60{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of the respondents say that only established players will be able to sustain CAPEX rollouts while 38{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} say new entrants will have to bring new ideas to sustain. Tata-DoCoMo, is perhaps the most vivid example of this. Despite late entry to 2G GSM arena, DoCoMo is now present in 20 telecom circles (out of 22 across India) and with its innovative tariff schemes, it has managed to sustain momentum of subscriber additions, despite stiff competition in deeply fragmented market. And according to goBroadband, Tata-DoMoCo may breakeven within 12 months of its launch of operations.
Now about Mobile Number Portability, recent reports say that operators are going to miss the 31st march deadline of MNP implementations and there’s little interpretation needed of TW survey results on MNP. Some other survey results like sustaining growth with low tariff and vacating ‘7’ & ‘8’ levels for mobile numbers support the same facts. Also there’s little information on how survey was conducted, how many respondents participated and how questions were framed. If you ask us, the survey failed to throw light on any specific area pertaining to Telecom India. Telecomblogs dub it as mere general attempt to re-place the misplaced blocks of information. Little quality with lots of generalization!
TW, are you listening?
