Commodity Trap of Indian Telecom

You are due to be charged rental of Rs.30 for CALLERTUNE on 21-Mar-11. RC with 31 to extend validity for 31 days. To deactivate, SMS CAN CT to 144(TollFree). 

The deactivation message to 144 kept on failing and sometime later came this message from Vodafone:

Rs.30 has been deducted towards caller tune rental. 

As per the Indian Government Directive, Airtel was insisting on identification documents which one Mr.Y did submit but Airtel never updated their records. After 2 months , the number was temporarily disconnected without any prior notice. The frustrated users end up tweeting as we see in the image above.

It's no more a secret that the cost of talking in India has been tending to be zero and the Indian Telecom market is becoming more and more competitive with each day. Areas such as customer service seem to be getting left behind in the race to survive and exceed in the highly competitive environment. With MNP (Multiple Number Portability)  across the same circle in full swing now, it is yet to be seen how much of improvements it has brought into telecom service provider offerings. All players , i repeat All of them actually went into a strategy of price war rather than differentiating themselves on their offerings and services. Low price without seamless network connectivity and with service issues will never get a favor from the subscribers.

The service providers have created a sort of commodity trap for themselves. With continued reduction in prices and lowest ARPU(Average Revenue Per User) in India, they just didn't had any bandwidth to invest to the extent required on the service front. Add to it the huge payments they are making for the 3G Licences. So everyone is trying to play volume game and attain a high base of subscriber to make up for the low ARPU but it is at the same time straining their systems and services. Hence those invariable billing and network issues.

Little do they realize that it is just a matter of time when they wont be able to reduce the price further and the customer centric approach will be the winning differentiating factor thereon.