Advertising with Search or Content ? - Funda1

Since long time I didn't get time to write. I had plan for quite some time to write series of blog around Content, search and online Advertise. Small pointer like blogs and then discus with people-friends interested in the same topic. So let us start from today..

Advertising to be done with Search or Content?
A) It is based the Objective of Advertising & Branding.
B) It also needs to consider aspects of life cycle management of the product/services
(like incubation stage, or growth stage, maturity or declining phase of product)
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There are yet many things to add to it as I get time will update it.. Surely before 31st Dec-2008 :-)
Till that time put your comments/pointer/thoughts- for how to enhance this article

Mobile ARPU in India - Right Indicator?

Imagine a country with 25mn population growing at rate lesser than 1% per annum, per capita income $ 10,000 p.a. and having 85% mobile pentration. It is very difficult to even add 50,000 new customers every month. Most of the times customers will come from competition churn. It makes growth purely a function of ARPU. (Revenue Growth) = f (ARPU)

Now Look at condition in India where every month approx. 7mn new customers are added and telecom (cellular) density is just brushing to 25%. Per capita income of is about $800 p.a. Growth will hapeen more rapidly in rural area. Can revenue growth be a function of ARPU only? Can ARPU be the right indication of Indian telecom? For next 4-5 years till the time price hardening happens, dip in ARPU will be continuous... till the time teledensity increases to the level of 75% about.
(Revenue Growth) = {f (Market share, Telecom density, ARPU1)/f(ARPU) }
where ARPU1 is ARPU earned from the customer over long period...

The point I am trying to make is do not look at ARPU as significant indicator of health of Indian telecom company. Look at how innovative telecos are in terms of customer care, reducing churn.
Gross churn number could be one of the good parameter to compare among peer companies.
More the customer stays on the network more benefital it becomes. cost of aquisition of new customer is significant, new cust. typically takes 2-4 months to start billing to its full potential, cost of competition churn is also not insignificant...
Make the customer happy and try to keep them on the netwrok as long as possible which makes it more and more profitable and more and more difficult and costlier for the competition to churn 'Happy customer'... ARPU is bound to dip further as IUC - termination charges reduces, new competition comes in and operator goes 'Rural' for further aquisition..
(Profitability) ~ {f ('Happy & Loyal customer')/f ('Gross churn')} leading to rev. growth
Blog ends here.. But there is much more to this to discuss and share with like minded... Call me/ e-mail me/ add comments here. Let us improve collective understanding of ours to help increase % of "Happy Customers" on the network leading to little more happier India .. ;-)

Advantage for new Telco launching services in India

It is always told let us have first mover advantage! But what about player who plans to enter in Indian telecom industry for not less than 10 year late!!

There may be many disadvantages for being a decade late.. So are the benefits to start with latest technological advantages over legacy technology.

I am trying to put forward one unique advantage new Telco have and established Telco can not have so effectively. Not a rocket science, just the same thing which RTOs across countries started doing it. Mankind has special affinity towards number, especially when it is to do with your car or mobile....

Best thing new Telcos can do is auction mobile number across circles….
Some of the quickly recognizable benefits I am listing down..
A) Create on line community for auction
B) Brand awareness & WoM promotions
C) Brand association with pride/esteem of ownership
D) Co-branding & promotions
E) Untapped way for sales to the early adaptors
F) Last but not least additional revenue
Others benefits are waiting for your comments and contribution to get revealed… And for any discussion call me on +91- 9320550258 :-)
So Next time do ask ‘why is this your mobile number’ instead of ‘what is your mobile number’ or ‘kitane ka aaya ye mobile number?’
Big assumption is at least some of the new entrants are interested to launch services and not looking for short term gain of renting allocated spectrums to existing players ;-)

Turn the disadvantage of being late to the advantage of virgin pools of sexy number series available for auction

Internet Telephony in India

TRAI had sent one letter to DOT dated 18th AUG 2008 It is about implementation of internet telephony by opening up connectivity between PSTN network and internet cloud for domestic calling as well (International calling is already permitted by TRAI). Though news of internet telephony (commonly also known as VOIP or SIP based calling) is covered by most of the national news papers, its immediate impact on voice call pricing is I believe little hyped.

I tried to cover my interpretation of internet telephony (IT) impact in domestic voice business under 3 major headings:

(1)Time factor, (2) Pricing pressure, (3) Quality of services,

1) Time to Market for internet telephony (IT) offered by ISPs:
a) DOT shall allocate numbering plan from E.164 number resources for ISP interested in providing net telephony. Page 3.13.13 page 52,53
b) TEC has to conduct study to appropriately block numbers for ISP's internet telephony in newly recommended 11 digit number plan
( Financial Express article argues time line required is about 30-60 days to implement)
c) DOT also has to notify the respective ENUM gateway domain name allocated to ISPs, UASLs, CMTS and BSOs for IT in advance.
Only based on this information, all NLDOs facilitating IT will able to update their records (recommended time line to NLDOs after receiving information is within 10 working days)
d) ISP has to integrate with NLDOs for providing net telephony for terminating calls to PSTN network or vice-a-versa
- It includes commercial negotiation for carriage and techno-commercial agreements
- And physical integration which need to consider media gateways standards, technical testing of connectivity through internet cloud, CDR UATs
e) Most important issue is prior-approval from concern security agencies for the lawful interception equipment put in place by ISPs. Only 40 bit encryption is permitted currently, which may not be enough for carrying secure voice traffic.

2) Pricing of internet telephony by ISPs:
a) Net telephony prices will be mainly driven by negotiated carriage charges with NLDO and termination charges (30p/min) for PSTN terminations
- ISP has to negotiate carriage charges with their NLDOs for terminating traffic to PSTN (within ceiling limit of carriage to 65p/min)
b) ISPs may able to drop down prices within peer groups (based on their peering agreements).
c) Other points to be noted is According to an industry estimates as high as 85% of revenue presently being earned by an ISP is used to hire resources. These resources are taken from access providers (UASL, BSO), NLDs and ILDs.
d) Besides that TRAI has recommended DoT to prescribe charges to ISPs for E.164 number allocation
ISPs providing IT will have impact on pricing as normally happens with increase in competition but it will be slow and should not be drastically different. Pricing pressure will be equally on all.

3) Quality of Service of internet telephony (IT) by ISPs:
a) TRAI has decided QoS should be kept market driven currently
b) For good voice quality minimum access to internet should be 256 Kbps (commonly known as broadband)
- Will there be dial tone every time receiver picked?
- Will the call quality be maintained most of the time and during the call ?
- Capabilities of ISPs for handling issues like Jitter, Echo, Delay and high level of network performance suitable for carrier grade voice quality is yet to be fully tested in Indian scenario
- What kind of SLAs will ISPs able to commit for voice services needs to be seen
Assuming ISP is able to provide high quality necessary for carrier grade voice, it will surely add up into their costing
c) At customer end, investment on SIP based communication equipment will be required (branded SIP phone equipments are costly as even mentioned in ET starting with Rs. 2,000 and going upto Rs. 15,000)

IT will surely have its impact as any other additional competition would have. But this impact and pricing pressure is not something which should come over night by just introduction of IT.
First step is ISP has to negotiate good carriage rates with NLDOs (ceiling rate of 65p per min), and as of now termination rates of 30p per min is same for all.
There will be additional cost ISPs needs to consider for maintaining high bandwidth available always for good quality IT.

Let us see how IT development shapes up in India...