Today’s Indian mobile user is free to select his/her service provider and even switch to a favorable one almost immediately. Existing telecom operators see this as a striking opportunity to tap such price-sensitive and quality-service oriented customers. Poaching or trying to bring customers of a different telecom operator under an operator’s own umbrella of subscription, has therefore become a rough-cut strategy in this environment of intense telecom rivalry. In response to the stiff competition, operators have launched impactful campaigns with super economical prepaid mobile recharge packs that have created quakes in the telecom industry.
Poaching by Indian telecom operators – Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel
A severe phase of competition was introduced when Reliance Jio entered the market with its freebies and unlimited voice and data packs. Incumbent operators including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and others lost many of their customers to Reliance Jio on account of the latest high speed 4G data plans launched by Jio. According to some sources, it was earlier mentioned by The Cellular Operators Association of India that the operator was trying to offer commercial services while presenting its move as a test launch. “It is looking pretty much commercial launch to us,” said Rajan S Mathews, COAI’s Director General.
As a result of Vodafone’s and Idea Cellular merger, the newly formed company is expected to take away a bigger portion of market subscribers and revenue. The revenue of the combined entity is likely to exceed 50% shares in circles including Uttar Pradesh (West), Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Haryana, and Gujarat. Bharti Airtel is planning to launch new tariff plans featuring higher user benefits in at least these circles. Being the largest telecom operator in terms of subscriber base, Airtel also wishes the awaited Vodafone-Idea merger to be delayed. According to some reports by Credit Suisse, it is expected that the merged entity would get a spectrum market share of 26% and this could place Bharti Airtel at the second position on this score.
The Telecom Industry’s Concerns with Human Resources
Due to a heavy price war inflicted by Reliance Jio’s entry and sequential demonetization, recruitments in the telecom industry dropped by up to 40% in 2016. Recruiters have also quoted that adding of staff addition will be limited over the next six months to a year, in order to bridge over financial crunch. Increments and bonuses are expected to suffer greatly as an outcome of this move.
Being positioned between the competitors and customers, the incumbent telecom operators are struggling hard to bring in the best of innovation and alertness in their pricing strategies in order to counter the increasing challenges of the market. A smart customer chooses to go with the best available options, especially when its online mobile recharge. JRI or JustRechargeIt.com offers 24×7 online mobile recharge solutions including Airtel prepaid recharge, Vodafone mobile recharge, Idea mobile top up and so on. One can recharge DTH connection and Data cards as well and even store 10 numbers into each category for quick recharging. One-click utilities like Repeat-A-Recharge and automated Schedule-A-Recharge are smart functions for instant recharging through JRI card, a smart and secure wallet in the cloud.
