Indian customer is demanding and informed: Telecom CxOs

NEW DELHI: Indian CxOs discussing issues related to managing service delivery

have said that the Indian customer today is not only demanding but also

knowledgeable about his rights. There is no way service providers can seek to

win a short-term advantage by simply introducing a new service. The key is to

introduce services that are not only affordable but more importantly useful to

the user. Service providers have all found that there were many services which

customers are not aware of let alone using it. Therefore, another challenge

facing service providers is to educate customers about the services being

offered.

Panelists at the roundtable discussion organized by monthly telecom magazine

Voice & Data included S K Gupta, CMD, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd.; Sumanjit

Chaudhry, CEO, Bharti Telenet; Niraj Gupta, Director, South Asia, FLAG Telecom;

Anil Tandon, VP, Network Services, Birla Tata AT&T Ltd; Naresh Gupta, chief

technical officer, Hutchison Essar; and Johnathan Chiu, Director Marketing, Asia

Pacific, Hewlett-Packard Software and Solutions Organization. Jasjit Sawhney,

CEO, Net4India, moderated the discussion.

The discussion was spread over three aspects of the issue. The first part

explored the definition of quality of service and the mindset of the Indian

customer, the second part deliberated the issue of value-added services and

technology deployment and the third part tried to explain the much-hyped

phenomenon of broadband availability.

The definition of value-added service is constantly evolving since what was a

value-add a couple of years ago is basic expectation for the customer. An

effective example is the case of Internet access. At the same time, service

providers should also have the pulse on the needs of the people and introduce

services that are both useful and affordable for customers. An example to this

instance is the high-profile failure of WAP services in India, which never took

off.

Broadband in India is still far from reality. The issues here again are

high-cost and quality of content. The success story of iMode in Japan and

broadband in Korea were essentially due to the popularity of games, which are

hugely popular in those countries. At the same time, these services were made

available at affordable rates.

Therefore, it is imperative for service providers to remember whether the

customer is ready for a particular service or not. Educating the customer is an

important function but it is also a very expensive proposition. Therefore what

service providers perceive as a first mover advantage may in fact turn out to be

a first mover disadvantage.