Different ring tone?

COMMUNICATION

A few years ago, I asked a senior executive in a Mumbai-based mobile company about the uncanny coincidence with which rival operators in the city announced identical tariff cuts and hikes.

His explanation went something like this. "When you are eye to eye with your competition, you know exactly what he is thinking."

Despite the highly competitive nature of the mobile phone market, little has changed in this respect. Tariffs mysteriously level out in a matter of days, if not hours. Rarely does one operator, let's say in GSM, score clearly over the other. In this context, will a large new player on the stage make a difference ? Will this player, potentially Vodafone, not look eye to eye with his rivals and break away ?

Vodafone has already announced it will slash handset costs and bring live TV into India. Let me list out two more.

Number Portablity
Vodafone has done it in most of Europe already, including the United Kingdom. A stiff regulatory hand has ensured that consumers can switch service providers if they want, without changing their phone numbers.

So why not offer its potential Indian customers the option of switching service providers. I may not want to but others may. There are of course some technical glitches here because all operators may not play ball. The point is someone's got to stand up and say he's doing it or at least wants to do it. And this could be Vodafone's chance.

Value Added Services
Everyone knows the mobile telcos are making a killing from ringtone downloads and SMSs, at rates which are best termed extortionate. One reason could be that the mobile telcos want to generate as much profits as possible before the industry turns again or some big investments come up.

In comes a new player like Vodafone. Do you continue to cream the market (maybe to help pay back the debt!) or take the long term view of opening up the field a little bit.

The market for content delivery over mobile can grow much faster and wider if the telecom costs were not so prohibitive. After all, there are 100 million plus subscribers instead of the few million that are being creamed.

There are other service areas that Vodafone can work on to, for instance, how about setting a new standard for high speed mobile data wireless links ? And so on. For now, this will suffice. Keep a close eye on this space.

govindraj@business-standard.com