Arun 795 Report post Posted June 1, 2007 2007-06-01 13:41:41 - Moneycontrol.com Q: Start off by telling us the kind of slashes that have now been introduced by Rel Comm, both in the international and the interstate divisions? A: Yes, there has been some very good news once again for Reliance customers. Let’s talk about roaming first. Today, we have introduced two more new plans, which are coming on top of the leadership we took 10 days ago for our customers, by announcing special tariff plans. Further, consumer insight which has been coming, shows that a lot of our customers need incoming roaming free, so that they don’t have to worry about taking a call when they are roaming outside their home state or home circle. We have introduced two plans. The first one, for the customers who have heavy usage. They can just subscribe to our 990 plan and they will get a whopping 900 minutes. That means 15 hours of incoming talk-time free while they are roaming. These days nobody possibly needs more than 15 hours of free incoming while roaming. For smaller users, we have introduced 390 plan, so that they will get 200 minutes or three and a half hours of talking while traveling in a month. Three and a half hours of incoming talk while someone is traveling four or five days outside his/her home state is sufficient to meet the requirement of any customers. And put on top of it, the tariffs are Re 0.40, Re 0.50 and Re 1 for making outgoing calls; I believe that our customers have got a fantastic deal. Q: So, effectively for you as a company in percentage terms, how much have you slashed roaming rates both for incoming and outgoing? A: If you compare it with prescribed ceiling rates, our prescribed ceiling rates are at Rs 2.40 for outgoing calls and for any STD, we are offering rates as low as Re 1. Prescribed rate, which is the ceiling rate, is today at Rs 1.75 for incoming calls and now we are offering it free. Last week, we had announced 70% reduction on selected plans. In this plan, actually we have made incoming roaming calls free altogether for our customers up to a certain number of minutes on which the ceiling has been put very generously, so that no customer will feel the pinch. You can’t possibly talk more than 15 hours in a month while roaming. Q: Last time when we spoke, you had introduced the 777 plan. Can you update us in terms of what kind of subscriber additions you have had, particularly in that segment? A: In fact, this has been one of the greatest success stories. As you know we sold 1 million handsets within 7-8 days of our launch. In fact, I have heard that there were long queues in Bellary, Karnataka recently. There was such a rush that some of our stores had to really request people to stand in the queue before taking the handsets. The response has been fantastic. The success story of black and white has continued in 1234 plan, which we launched in the middle of May. Similar story has been repeated there as well. Almost 0.5 million handsets have been sold in a very small period; colour phones were also available at the price point of Rs 1,234. So, you can see the numbers are just piling up. Q: Will this show up in your monthly additions? What kind of additions can we expect from Rel Comm this time? A: Additions will be very good. Yes, it will show up in additions. Some of it will go as new subscribers, some as upgrades of our existing customers because any handset sale you do, part of it goes towards the existing base. So, the numbers are not very far, we are compiling them. You will hear them in a day or two. Q: Even as a ballpark, how much do you expect to see - 20% or 30%? A: There will be a fantastic growth on that. Q: The concern really is with the slashing of these rates and the kind of introduction you have across new handsets, what happens to your margins? Can you give us a sense of what you are seeing right now both in terms of ARPUs and minutes of usage at this point for these new programmes? A: That is a very insightful question. Actually, if you look at the roaming customers, what we are counting on and past assumptions we have, the usage of a customer goes up because of price elasticity equation. When you are thinking that you are paying Rs 3 or Rs 4 a minute, your calling pattern is different than when you think that you are paying Re 1 a minute or Rs 0.40 a minute. There is an absolute change in your calling pattern. As a result, our revenues have always reached the same level within a few weeks of any tariff cut. This has been our experience in the past that customer restores his revenue to the original level very quickly, once he realises that he can talk more for the same amount. So, we are confident that our ARPUs will be maintained. In fact, I am confident of getting customers from other operators where the customers are perhaps paying high charges; many of them may switch over to us. As a result, our mix may be getting even better. Q: Just one final question really, on how things have fared in terms of what you are doing with the tower side of your business and whether you have finalised any plans on that and unlocking that side? A: Yes, we have made various announcements recently. Our plans are going absolutely as per schedule. We will be putting up more than 20,000 towers in a very short while and orders have been placed, construction is at pace. The work is going on at high speed. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sadikk 301 Report post Posted June 1, 2007 I want his email address or mobile number. Anyone?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Arun 795 Report post Posted June 1, 2007 SP.Shukla [at] relianceada.com ! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kshah 452 Report post Posted June 3, 2007 sadik, dont rush wait till RUIM solution. It depends on you how fast we you can have. I am sure RUIM will give you gr8 edge. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
