The Management of Tata DoCoMo has indicated that pricing rationality is prevailing in the sector with almost all operators withdrawing discounts / free minutes. These changes are already visible in the company’s own RPM realisations. There has been no change to usage patterns all through these tariff changes so far, explained management. While the industry will see an uplift in RPM, the tariff differential between the market leaders and smaller players could remain, said management.
While there are negligible changes on headline tariffs (barring some instances of call rates 1.0p/sec going up to 1.5p/sec), a lot of action is taking place on the promotions/discounts. These actions are in the form of reduction in validity, reduction in free minutes, reduction in amount of discount offered, withdrawal of on-net offers etc.
While all operators in the industry are withdrawing discounts with the aim of pushing up realised RPMs, Tata Docomo management believes that the absolute discount (in p/min) of the sub-scale players versus the market leaders could remain. Management does not expect any negative disruptions in tariffs in the near term.
Tata DoCoMo Data Strategy
Tata Docomo is confident of good growth in the data segment in the near future. Management believes that the rising data consumption through mobile phones and growing Smartphone penetration (20% of handset sales now vs 10% a year ago) all point to a rapidly developing ecosystem.
In addition to the existing products, Tata Docomo is also investing heavily in Wi-Fi hotspots to capture the expected growth in data demand. Tata DoCoMo has 3G operations in some selected profitable circles. It has PAN India EVDO Based 3G Equivalent Dongle based Data services for Large Screen devices using its CDMA network.