Still Full of Gaps

The voice tariff war among operators is leading to the downfall of ARPU which impacts TSPS’ operational cost optimization for better quality of service

The telecommunications industry has contributed a lot and has acted as a catalyst to change our life in urban and rural society in the last one decade. In the last 24 months, the landscape of the telecommunications industry has changed drastically—the industry, which was our socio-economy growth driver, is toppling on a daily basis, the profit making proposition has turned out to be a monster which is getting out of control.

The reasons for this debacle are many and most of the findings are not related to telecom operators’ approaches nor the subscribers’ but the way this market has entered into a price war on voice tariff. It might be because we have a regulation framework that is not fully taking care of this industry for a smooth business model.

The biggest contributor to this downfall is voice tariff war and hunger to increase the subscriber base; the operators have gone into a strategy to protect their subscriber’s boundaries (MNP) and churn of subscriber base from one operator to another.

The voice tariff wars among operators are leading to the downfall of ARPU (Average Revenue Per Users) which impacts the TSPs’ (Telecom Service Providers) operational cost optimization for better quality of service.

This ARPU war and presence of a lot of players in the same boundary of operations are forcing the TSPs to think differently and not to optimize the operational cost but to increase the ARPU from their subscribers.

Intelligent selections and deployment of the VAS services can save TSPs from the voice tariff war and at the same time increase the ARPU from their set of subscribers. The next decade will be of mobile data services deployment which we may term as Mobile VAS on data platform.

If we analyze the meaning of VAS, it should be add VALUE to the subscribers as a service but as on date, we consider services starting from SMS (different types) to video call as VAS. In real sense, what we are offering today are all CAS (Cash Added Service) and till date our entire revenue model is based on these so called VAS and there is no equine model adopted by TSPs. Every TSP is offering the same services and we are again in the same war as we are in for voice tariff plan.

There is no doubt that these present VAS services are keeping the TSPs on life