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.

Are you Consumerized?

If you are a recent MBA grad in India , you must be enjoying the current very-soon-to-be-over-post-college-pre-job period? Eagerly waiting for that first day on job?And for that office laptop? What if it turns out to be one black, heavy, bulky and ugly box? Will you still use it? Atleast in Office? (assuming you won't be able to flaunt it the way you used to flaunt your now-soon-to-be-ex (laptop? Ofcourse not? Oh those happy days!)).

Most of the time , you will use your office laptop as your own property (read - for your own personal work/surf/entertainment). In reality , you no more will get just any ugly box; even your employer understands you want it your way. The time has come when you , the end user , can influence the devices/tools/machines to be used and not your company. So if you are comfortable with an OpenOffice , noone will force you to open your docs in MS-Word. Isn't it?

Now what should a Toshiba or a Dell or an HP or an Apple Team should build - That sleek one (Sony Viao even has a size zero one!), the designer colored one , having high-end graphics card for you to play around(games of course) and a webcam to make those necessary skype calls (assumption applied: the now-soon-to-be-ex theory failing) OR/AND those bulky powerful one for enterprise usage(yes they are customized to have higher processing power, speed, memory, configuration and what not). At Dell, the same development team takes care of both small business & consumer. Many vendors are offering enterprise products with look-and-feel of consumer products. The number of SMBs buying PCs from retail or online outlets is increasing with an overall decrease in the purchase from dealer market.

So what's happening?

The line between consumer and enterprise technology/product demand is slowly getting blurred. The new gen Enterprise 2.0 workforce is hard-wired for specific technology/product/features/facility and the companies that overlook it can face a loss of competitive advantage in the labor market. Would you like to work in a company which don't allow the Facebook access to its employees? Social media/Networking  has improved our personal lives, why not use it to improve our corporate lives as well?

The toy is becoming tool? or its the other way around (does your child prefer an internet connection to a licence to an outdoor game?)

---

(PS: I still love my college laptop. Not because of the Toshiba label it carries but more because it has all the tools in the world installed , all the bookmarks , those read later, those add-ins which can make me the most successful and most efficient human being on any day at any place.)