Saturday, October 06, 2012

Bringing on The New Numbers Game

Mobile Number Portability Promises to Usher in a New Paradigm in Indian Telecom. While New Players would benefit, The Real Advantage would be to the Customers

Mobiles have brought two significant changes with respect to numbers. One is that we do not need to, and therefore do not, remember phone numbers anymore – due to the convenience of address books for communication. On the other hand, our number moves around to so many contacts over time, that the very idea of changing our number fills us with dread, especially with respect to all that we may lose professionally in our immediate and extended network – add to it the cumbersome process of communicating the change. That becomes a natural barrier to customer churn – strategy lord Michael Porter calls it the customer’s switching cost – which has been hugely beneficial to players in this country, particularly the ones who were here first and got the cream. Another particular reason has been the emotional attachment that some people develop with their numbers.

Half of the Indian population is hooked on to their mobile phones, with penetration levels crossing more than 50% of the population. But the burgeoning mobile phone subscriber base every month (around 15 million people are added to the mobile network every month currently) hasn’t been supported with a similar rise in the quality of the network, and that has led to poorer connectivity and a greater dissatisfaction among the customer base. But despite the number of exciting offers that players keep coming up with – that can lead to a better and more rewarding consumer experience – there are many customer who refuse to cross the Rubicon and go to a competitor simply because of the number.

Apparently, not anymore. With the launch of Mobile Number Portability (MNP), the great Indian telecom success story has taken the next leap forward. The much awaited and long pending MNP has seen the light of the day in India thanks to the new Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal. After taking over the reins from the tainted former union telecom minister A. Raja, the first thing that Sibal did was implement MNP in Haryana – and he announced that MNP would reach the rest of India by January 20, 2011. “Everybody is taking the deadline very seriously as the minister himself has declared the deadline this time,” says J. S. Sarma, Chairman TRAI to B&E. What worked was nothing else but Sibal, as for so many years, despite TRAI continuing to recommend MNP, lobbying by the cellular service providing companies ensured that MNP was kept on hold. Operators, through their body Cellular Operators Association of India had been busy lobbying to delay the implementation of the service in the past. The main concern obviously had been that the cost of retaining customers would increase.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,