Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Even as the auction of 3G spectrum continues to be a distant dream for private operators in India, telcos have rolled up their sleeves and started contemplating 'go to market' strategies to avoid post-spectrum allocation delays.

To facilitate brainstorming on ideas that could help service providers to plan for requirements of the market once the 3G space opens up for private operators, VOICE&DATA and Intec, organized a roundtable discussion in the national capital, inviting expert views on one of the most crucial processes-pricing and billing for 3G services.

The roundtable titled 'Evolving pricing/billing models for 3G', was conceived with an idea to exchange thoughts with service providers and understand how they plan to make it more popular among the users. Also an effort was made to throw light on some of the challenges that might hinder a smooth take-off of the next generation services in India.

Moderated by Baburajan K, executive editor, Voice&Data, the event saw a hall-packed participation from both private and state-run operators. Experts from BSNL, MTNL, TTSL, Aircel, MTS, ByCell, and Datacom discussed what they perceived of 3G services in the Indian context and how they might like to approach for billing customers for it. Deliberations revolved around addressing business and technical needs for 3G billing, overcoming legacy constraints and managing challenges of online charging, while handling pre/postpaid convergence.

Intec, an OSS/BSS enabler that offers its solutions to a large number of service providers across the world, shared some of the billing models adopted by operators in countries where 3G services have seen some years of success. Referring to his presentation as 'Hitchhiker's guide to 3G', Diwakar Rai, program manager, Intec, said, “Some of the countries like Japan and Korea have yielded good results from their experiments with 3G strategies, but India will have to write its own definition of 3G services to make it a hit among users.”

3G failed to create waves in many countries, Japan and Korea being exceptions. In Japan, the licenses did not cost operators anything, so for them there was no haste to make break even. But the Indian scenario is different and the government is expecting to make a minimum of Rs 36,860 crore from 3G and BWA spectrum auction.

One of the suggested routes, according to Rai is to develop a realization of the need for 3G.

Sharing MTNL's experience of 3G market in India, the company's mobile services head and principal general manager (WS) AK Bhargava, said, “For us it took some time to make 2G a commercial success, but after an inflexion point there was a revolution. Similar things will happen in the case of 3G.”

“We are still struggling to cope up with convergent billing technology. The challenges here are too great, even though products and solutions enabling convergent billing are available. We may look at simplified concepts like daily or weekly bill and here too is a risk that the subscriber may be discouraged to use further,” he said.

Compelling Offers
The house shared a common belief that applications will draft the growth chart of 3G and they have to be highly innovative to catch customers' attention.

Diwakar Rai suggested a basic thumb rule. “Don't try to find one application that millions will use, find thousands of applications that will attract 50,000 customers each,” he said.

According to Bhargava of MTNL, in India LBS services can click with the people. Even though the operator is ready with LBS platforms it is still waiting for exciting content.

SC Sharma, GM, wireless services, BSNL said, “Well packaged plan is a must so that the subscriber does not defer his decision.”

Billing Strategy
There is definitely a need for this new technology in the country, but it is important that it translates into cost-effectiveness. Experts feel 3G can be a substitute for fixedline broadband, but the customer has to be convinced how 3G is better for him than GPRS.

Emphasizing on the fact that Indian subscribers are highly price sensitive, Sukanta Dey president, emerging business, TTSL, said, “India is largely a prepaid market; and bill-shock is a key concern. We should come up with unconventional applications. 3G subscription should be designed in a way that it is disguised as a prepaid model. The subscriber knows what he is paying for. These bucket models will help 3G to take-off well.”

“We have always been thinking of downstream revenues while there lies an opportunity to work on the upstream as well. OSS/BSS should integrate retailers and distributors for this multiple variable,” said Apu Saha, director, service delivery and business development, Bycell. An algorithm has to be planned for telco billing, he added.

Service providers feel any new technology has to basically do two things-bring down the cost and lead to higher convenience. However, vanilla pricing will instead make 3G services more expensive.

Intec's, country manager, financial services, Mohan Das concluded the session with some interesting pointers. He said the operators must first define what 3G is for; this will prevent confusing users. “The user must get ample number of choices to pick from and most importantly, the operators should device ways that make inter-country transactions simpler,” he said.

Heena Jhingan
heenaj@cybermedia.co.in