Dismissing the myth that new wireless operators will bleed and will be forced to merge with incumbent, Tata DoCoMO has caught every analyst on the wrong foot as it came out public for the first time that it will break even in 12 months. However, it is a bit too early to BUY the entire story ut in pieces. Tata DoCoMO can perhaps achieve that in a few circles, really especially the Southern circles but may be difficult on a pan-India basis.
According to Tata DoCoMo’s internal survey, 70% of the subscribers where not satisfied with the value they received from services by existing players. With the ongoing tariff war in Voice, SMS threatening to stretch to other VAS, the bold statement tells us that Tata DoCoMO is not doing bad at all and is likely to maintain competitive intensity, which could pose more challenges for the incumbents.
Operationally, Tata DoCoMo has been steadily adding 3-4mn over the past four months. It notes that while usage patterns have not seen a drastic shift based on per-second billing, it is seeing an overall positive trend in usage. And finally, they believe the future money in India telecom will come from simply providing access to being an enabler of services through content and applications. [They have struck a deal with Tata’s group company – TCS for some killer applications]
Watching Kolkata market, i can say here people take Docomo for their sms scheme(100 free after 1st 2 charged), aftr 3 months of activation the sms scheme will be over, and people will throw out TD Sim. another reason of TD’s user additions, selling of free sims with Rs 44 talktime – even i took such 5 sims, used the talktime and line is closed ! well buddynet is cool one, most people hate this daily rental !
DOCOMO has launched and created news by the number of subsribers and even launching 3G in a short period of time. But no one has taken its feed back from the original users yet. You may not find even 20% of its users satisfactory. Network Problems, call drops, inferior sound quality and wrong announcements indicating the mobile is switched off instead of out of coverage etc. I have subscribed for nearly 50 connections for my employees and surrendered all the connections after suffering from TATA DOCOMO for 6 months. The network is cheap with regard to charges as well as services.