CIOL:Innovation drives subscriber growth in telecom

Pragati Simlote

NEW DELHI: India is one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world and has a plethora of telecom players vying for a larger pie of the market.

With Reliance planning to latch on to the GSM bandwagon, things are hotting up in the telecom market. In this cut throat competition scenario, in terms of call rates, etc., what differentiates one telecom players from another is the kind of innovation it does in terms of services provided as well as the mechanism of service delivery.

The GSM technology-based cellular subscriber base in India touched 82.4 million in July 2006 with Bharti Airtel capturing 29.53 per cent of the market share. State-owned BSNL came second with a subscriber figure of 19.03 million with a market share of 23.09 per. The total user base of Hutch touched 18.39 million and its market share was at 22.33 per cent.

Airtel has many firsts to its name, be it e-recharge, caller tunes, full music and full music video downloads and background music, etc. Currently, 70 per cent of the recharges are done electronically. This facility is now available in more than 4,000 towns.

As part of providing innovative services to its customers, Airtel recently announced a strategic tie-up with Microsoft with the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 platform. It has also partnered with IBM to deliver India's first 'Service Delivery Platform'. The most recent addition in Airtel’s bid to find innovative business models to deliver better customer experience is the estimated $ one billion network expansion contract with Ericsson.

With a vision to be the most admired brand in India by 2010, Airtel is now structuring its organization and formulating future plans based on this vision. The company has created a new group, the content services group (CSG), responsible for delivering new products services and features for all customer segments.

Airtel plans to be present in 5,161 census towns and 1,50,000 villages by this year-end. Apart from the retail initiative, it is also planning to target the enterprises and SMEs with its innovative offerings.

Hutch is also not far behind in providing new and innovative services to its subscribers. It recently launched ‘Visual Radio’ for its subscribers. FM station ‘Radio Mirchi’ listeners can now "See what they hear" with Visual Radio, a new music service that allows listeners to interact with their favorite radio station on their mobile phone for Hutch subscribers.

The company has also tried to innovate VAS with Fun Cards. Through this, Hutch customers can purchase their favorite caller tunes and ring tones off the shelf from the nearest Hutch retailer.

BSNL, which is the second largest player in the telecom space, is also not far behind. BSNL is deploying the location-based services (LBS) solution by Telenity, a US-based provider of next-generation services for communications networks.

© CyberMedia News

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