Saturday, June 6, 2009

Increasing customers growth by offering bundling handsets

Many telecommunications operators in Indonesia that was built later will face same problem to introduce their product to customers and get their good response. The thing that it is make sense is right now there so many operators here for mobile and fixed license, they are around tens operators. In addition, their customers are located at some big city like Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya and Medan. .
This is why new operator should have another strategic so they can sale their services and get response from customers. Moreover by this new strategic they will get loyal customers even there will come new offing from their competitor
Traditional strategic and it has been implemented by some operators that was built former that is developing strong networks in every single sides. These operators continuously increase their infrastructure network at new areas that there no telecommunication service are available and continuously to optimize them. The more coverage they have, the more customers they will get. These methods are very costly and the same strategic can not be adopted by new operators. It is need more than 5 years to get what we called Break Even Point (BEP) and new operators can not do it. New operators have to consider some alternatives instead of developing massive infrastructures network. Formerly, (around 1996-1997) there are only 2-3 mobiles and one fixed operators, it can be accepted to investment high budget to develop networks infrastructure and will get benefit after for 5 years. In addition, mobile telecommunications is new technology at that time and will get positive response from customers
But the same strategic can not be implemented to the new operators since right now tariff is so cheap compared to the previous. Commonly, all operators compete to get as many as customer by offering low tariff for voice and SMS
Alternative methods have been introduced by new operator and widely promotion is become first priority to these operators.

What is the new strategic?
Offering bundling handset is a new trend used by new operator to offering their services. And obviously this is low price handset with minimum features available inside, but this is enough for basic telecommunications needed by customers, e.g. making voice call and messaging, monotone ring tone and color body for attractive performances. In this strategic, operators work together with handset vendor then bundled the handsets to have only work with specific requirement. In other words, handset will have no functions we put another number (DN) inside it. The specific requirements can be:
1. have only specific band frequency
2. Authenticate with specific
Both of requirements are inserting during fabrication process to the handsets

Many kind of banding handsets has been introduced by new and old operators due to this method is effective and proved have good response from customers. PT Bakrie Telecom as a new fixed wireless operator with its brand market ESIA has offered many kind of this product since 1 year ago. Even ESIA is not the pioneer for this strategic but it seems market response very well.

There are some reasons why it is occurring:

1. It is fixed wireless handset which has low tariff and
2. New introduction for fixed wireless license
3. Handsets have low price
4. Attractive services offered, e.g. free call and SMS to same operator numbers

In this market strategic, operators are not following previous campaign as introduced by old operator that is the more coverage the more customers. Now they believe that the more innovative the more benefits. This is reasonable since mobile and fixed wireless customers are spreading at some big cities. Winning the competition can be done by many ideas instead of adding more coverage, and the banding handsets are the brilliant idea to win this competition. Operators can save much money by this methods and can be allocated to create more brilliant idea instead of network infrastructures development

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