Service Marketing - Service Marketing- Case Study 1 - Notes - Business Management , Study notes of Business Administration

Download Service Marketing - Service Marketing- Case Study 1 - Notes - Business Management and more Study notes Business Administration in PDF only on Docsity! Case study – 1 Impacts of key trends in Indian telecom industry Indian telecom industry is going through a phenomenal growth in the past five years. Many trends that shaped the direction of this industry have emerged during this period. This article discusses the key trends in the Indian telecom industry, its driver and the major impact of such trends affecting the operators, vendors and customers. 1. People go wireless: Indian customers are embracing the mobile technology in a big way (average four million subscribers are being added every month over the past six months). They prefer wireless service compared to wireline service, which is evident from the fact that while wireless subscriber base has increased 75 percent CAGR from 2001 to 2006, the wireline subscriber base growth rate has been negligible during the same period. In fact, many customers are returning their wireline phones to their service providers. The main drivers for this trend are quick service delivery for mobile connections, affordable pricing plans in the form of pre-paid cards and increased purchasing power among 18 to 40 years age group, prime market for this service. Some of the positive impacts of this trend are as follows: According to a study, 18 percent mobile users are willing to change their handsets every year to newer models with more features, which is a good news for the handset vendors. The other impact is that while the operators have only limited options to generate additional revenues through value-added services from wireline service, the mobile operators have numerous options to generate non-voice revenues from their customers. Some examples of value- added services are ring tone download, ring back tone, talking SMS, mobisodes etc. Moreover, there exists great opportunity for content developers to develop applications suitable for mobile users like mobile gaming, location based services etc. On the negative side, there is increased threat of virus, spread through mobile data connections and Bluetooth technology, in the mobile phones making it unusable sometimes. This is good news for anti-virus solution providers who will gain from this trend. Moreover, according to the study conducted by international organization, prolonged mobile usage could lead to more health related issues, which is a bad news for heavy mobile users. 2. Telecom equipment manufacturing: The telecom equipment deployed in the Indian telecom network is primarily manufactured in other countries and exported to India. However, there is growing trend of telecom equipment manufacturing in India. Many equipment and handset vendors have either setup their manufacturing facilities or in process of setting up such facilities in India. The main drivers for this trend are availability of low cost & high quality human resources, favorable government policies encouraging investment in telecom manufacturing, and tender norms of telecom operators requiring the vendors to have local manufacturing facilities. Some of the positive impacts of this trend are as follows: Availability of local telecom hardware manufacturing will enable Indian companies to transform into new product innovators from being mere software solution developers. Moreover, with manufacturing factories and their supply chain in place in India, telecom equipment will become cheaper compared to being imported from other countries. Also, the operators could enjoy the benefits of quick turn around time for their telecom equipment repairs because EXIM procedure takes approximately 60 days to get the telecom equipment repaired abroad. Finally, the new telecom manufacturing facilities could lead to more economic development in those cities. 3. Managed Services: Usually, telecom service providers operate their network taking care of all activities like managing outside plant wiring and all the way up to total network management, on their own. However, there is a growing trend among the new operators, especially mobile operators, to outsource majority of their network operations to third party service providers. Typically, the complex network management work is outsourced to telecom equipment vendors. The main drivers for this trend are as follows: Since the new operators lack