Arun 795 Report post Posted September 21, 2009 Economic Times 22 Sep 2009, 0000 hrs IST Tata Teleservices’ efforts to attack its larger and established rivals in the country’s crowded telecom space by playing the price card have yielded instant results. For the first time ever, Tata Teleservices has beaten the likes of Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest telco by revenues and subscribers,Vodafone Essar and Reliance Communications, to emerge on top in terms of monthly customer additions. The telco, which recently launched GSM service under the Tata DoCoMo brand, roped in a little over 3.4 million customers — GSM & CDMA platforms combined — during August, when compared to 2.8 million by Bharti Airtel. Tata Teleservices’ August performance is a 52% increase over its July numbers when it added 2.2 million new customers to its network. In the same period (July), Bharti added 2.8 million new users while Vodafone and Reliance Communications increased their subscriber bases by 2.2 million and 2.3 million, respectively. This is the first time in four months that Bharti Airtel has been upstaged in monthly additions. In March 2009, Vodafone had overtaken Bharti in subscriber adds, but has since failed to keep pace. Ditto with Reliance Communications, which had surged ahead of Bharti earlier this year in customer addition, following the launch of its GSM services. RCOM too has failed to match Bharti’s growth figures after it withdrew its initial schemes of giving free talk-time with all new GSM connections. The Tatas’ move to be innovative by introducing a per-second billing for its GSM users, pay-per-call and pay-per-character-SMS for its CDMA customers is also an indicator that Indian consumers are price-conscious, despite enjoying the lowest telecom tariffs in the world. This is despite incumbent operators maintaining that tweaking tariffs or entering into price wars will have a marginal or no impact on the industry. But, late last week, Bharti Airtel announced a new tariff plan of a flat 50 paise per minute for both local and national calls for pre-paid users within the network, triggering speculation that the country’s leading operator was responding to the latest steps by competitors. Tata Teleservices launched its GSM services under the brand name Tata DoCoMo in June with per-second pulse pricing model, breaking away from the usual pricing on per-minute basis. The operator also launched a pay-per-character-SMS scheme — Diet SMS — allowing users to pay for the number of words typed triggering innovations in SMS tariffs also, which till now has been charged on flat rates. “The impact of our efforts is just beginning to be felt. TTSL has so far launched Tata DoCoMo GSM services in eight circles and we are set to go live by the year-end. When the impact of that kicks in, our new subscriber addition is sure to witness an even further positive impact,” MD Anil Sardana said. However, Bharti, with a steady growth rate of just under 3 million users, continues to be the country’s largest operator by a huge margin. The telco has a customer base of close to 108 million as of August-end when compared to over 83 million for Reliance Communications and 80 million for Vodafone Essar. The Tatas with 42.79 million customers are ranked sixth in the country’s telecom space behind Idea and BSNL. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Greatest 55 Report post Posted September 22, 2009 ^^ Nice new... but in order to sustain the top spot, tata should keep providing its customers or new customers something new every month... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pasumark 51 Report post Posted September 22, 2009 Well one great point in this is Tata's GSM service is not available in all the circles. So this achievement is really fantastic. This is sure a wake up call for all the biggies - Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance and BSNL. If TATA is able to achieve this growth for couple of months more, then really we are here to witness another revolution in pricing in Inidan mobile market. Hope quality does not get affected Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kshah 452 Report post Posted September 22, 2009 Not couple of month, may be more than that for being torch bearer of yet another probable revolution. I suspect their (TATA) intentions as they are offerings are in prepaid segments only. And I believe pre paid segment because its bigger it has greater impact in short term. But serious offers are those offered in post paid segments -as it forces service providers to commit. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
vvinayakpai 26 Report post Posted September 22, 2009 RCOM has added only 1.66 million subscribers in all the 22 circles they operate in. They are just ahead of Idea Cellular which added 1.54 million subscribers. The fact that Tata has managed more than double the figure managed by RCOM, by operating in less than half the circles is really commendable. In order to attract further additions in the coming months, RCOM would be forced to adopt a more aggressive marketing technique bundled with offers. Bharti Airtel is the most stable of the lot adding 2.8 million subscribers. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KumaarShah 143 Report post Posted September 22, 2009 RGSM will have to wake up from its deep slumber or else it will be left all alone!!!!!! TataDoCoMo - way to go!!!! Vinayakpai (above post) has said it more than what any of us would have wanted to express.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
supernova 47 Report post Posted September 22, 2009 i think reliance sales and marketing team should gear up .. after so much aggresive plans of docomo they are still sleeping Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
vvinayakpai 26 Report post Posted September 23, 2009 I really hope Reliance wakes up as soon as possible!!!!!! My only fear is that in the process of trying to get up, Reliance might promote GSM much more than needed and indirectly kill their CDMA business. Many of their current schemes have made me feel that CDMA is secondary to GSM. Especially the STD pack of Rs. 75, which offers 150mins to GSM customers and 100 mins to CDMA customers. Hats off to Tata!!!!!! I never expected them to step up the marketing for Indicom as well, and that too in such an aggressive manner. Especially the local 30ps calling and the pap per call schemes, my god, mind boggling. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ravi_patent 28 Report post Posted September 23, 2009 (edited) ^ no matter how good the scheme pay per call scehme is, tata's cdma network can be termed as bad at best and pathetic at worst.with coupling pay per call scheme with buying new handsets ,one will not be sure when the offer will be withdrawn.the "friendlier prompt" from indicom(from the words of sardana) ,in case usage is high is another drawback..whereas docomo has been a no nonsense offering..thats why airtel was listing out 15 reasons to be on airtel in media Edited September 23, 2009 by ravi_patent Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lostjournal 7 Report post Posted September 23, 2009 ^ no matter how good the scheme pay per call scehme is, tata's cdma network can be termed as bad at best and pathetic at worst.with coupling pay per call scheme with buying new handsets ,one will not be sure when the offer will be withdrawn.the "friendlier prompt" from indicom(from the words of sardana) ,in case usage is high is another drawback..whereas docomo has been a no nonsense offering..thats why airtel was listing out 15 reasons to be on airtel in media I am using Tata Indicom for past 3 years. I have never felt their network is so pathetic. May be you have a bad experience. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
vvinayakpai 26 Report post Posted September 23, 2009 Yes thats tru Ravi. I agree with you now and thank you for informing me about the Tata network because I have never used their service until now. Airtel has stepped up their ad campaign now. What happened to Hrithik????? Is he "out of reach" on the Reliance Mobile GSM network??????? Latest heard that Reliance was trying to contact Hrithik for shooting a new ad campaign. But Hrithik was unreachable because he has started using the Reliance GSM connection now!!!!!!!!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ravi_patent 28 Report post Posted September 23, 2009 (edited) @sonamkumar i am using tata since 2 years ..the in building coverage in high raise buildings , malls etc is very bad.my colleagues who were on tata also complain the same .the only reason i think ,for many who had switched to tata was cheap call rates. the reliance which i have manages to have signals when tata fails and comes to my rescue(the coverage of cdma network is one of the reasons for reliance's headstrongness in pricing their tariffs vis-a -vis tata ) .. anyhow surprising to hear abt no coverage issues at ur side even docomo coverage(experienced myself) will not be comarable with reliance or airtel..otherwise why docomo will be offering free missed call alerts Edited September 23, 2009 by ravi_patent Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
manishag 17 Report post Posted September 23, 2009 well i totaly agreed that in CDMA tata needs to upgrade the network. tata CDMA network connectivity has problem specially in metros and the sub metros. if you have to use the phone for outgoing only then pay per call is good. but as far sa incoming is concern wudn't suggest anyone for tata Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KumaarShah 143 Report post Posted September 23, 2009 I too would agree that TATA-Indicom is not all that good. As for 'Pay per call' one pays Rs 1 or Rs 3 for Local/STD calls for 10 minutes although he may not speak for even 5 secs on Local/STD. In effect it all evens out, whichever way you look at it. Pay per call is in my opinion an useless scheme. After introducing pay per second with DoCoMo, TATA seems to have gone 10 years back. They could have introduced the same pay per second pulse for Indicom, if they were very sure of the numbers. But then, it appears that both RCOM and TATA have deserted CDMA and bring out goodies for GSM only. :NOTriste: :Equivocado: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
