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Bharti Telnet has started offering basic and cellular services. Cellular services under the brand Airtel and basic services under the brand Touchtel in TN. The public sector behemoth BSNL is the other basic services provider, in TN, right now. In just a couple of months Reliance Infocom and Tata Tele too will be launching their basic telecom services. COL spoke with Mr. K. Krishnan the CEO, TN operations, of Bharti, to find out what Bharti's game plan is to take on the might of BSNL, Tatas and Reliance. What is your strategy for competing with BSNL? Our USP is quality and since we focus on this aspect of our service, most, we won't have any problems. We are in a position to provide quality service to the customer, since we have created a new network. Connections terminate within 2 km. from the service exchanges and hence voice quality is very good. In the case of BSNL, each exchange serves up to a distance of 3 km and due to this clarity can suffer. Since we have a Optic Fibre Cable (OFC) network, the problem of 'Network Busy' is eliminated. We have plans for 26 types of value added services. Customer complaints will be serviced immediately since we have a pool of well qualified personnel to attend to the complaints. 24x7 Service support, through call centres is another of our strengths. Tatas and Reliance have announced launch of full-fledged telecom services in the next couple of months. What is your strategy to compete with these giants? Much before the two of them formally launch their services, we will have our network in place. They are planning to offer their services in selected streets only. Since they will be going the wireless route, customers have to invest in new appliances and this could pose problems for them. By the time they come in, we would have signed up a number of customers The first mover advantage is with us . We have clear plans for retaining the customers we acquire. What will be your market share?
Do you think you can come out ahead of BSNL in the price war? Definitely yes. We have already proved that we can. We have slashed ILD rates by 46%. Only TRAI has the authority to fix the guidelines for pricing and hence BSNL cannot lower prices, at will, and undercut. We are ready for lower tariffs, (if) fixed by TRAI. From when will you start providing services all over TN? Our immediate plans are to cover Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruppur, Hosur and Pondicherry in full. Before 2005, we plan to be in 130 places in TN. What is the total length of your OFCs in TN? We have laid 400 km. of OFCs, within the city and 2000 km. outside. Another 2000 km. of cable will be laid before March 2003. The government while granting licences had made it mandatory to provide telecom services in villages. What are your plans for discharging this obligation? This condition has been removed, now. The telecom companies have to pay 15% of their revenues to the government. This amount will be used by the government to subsidise telecom services, to villages. For example, if a village requires only two lines, the company that has an exchange, nearest to the village will be asked to provide the service and the government will subsidise the cost. Whether it is Reliance or us or BSNL, the same rule applies. The other condition is each company should provide its service to a minimum of 130 places. The Tatas are doing an aggressive pre-launch publicity, through different media, while you are maintaining a low profile despite launching your services?
Published on 6th May 2002 Saravanan
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Telecom has been thrown open and there is healthy competition among the service providers. Competition ultimately benefits the consumer and that is the case in telecom too. A price war is on and rates are falling, almost everyday. The latest has been from Bharti announcing a steep 46% cut in International Long Distance rates.
Our immediate plan is to target customers who do not have a telephone connection. Our first customers will be from this section. It will take some time for us to wean BSNL customers. We are confident, customers currently with BSNL, will migrate to Bharti, if we provide quality service. We are looking at a 60% market share and we are pretty confident of achieving this.
It is true. We were not ready for a huge influx of customers, resulting from an
aggressive ad. campaign. We are going slow on advertising since we do not want to disappoint our customers. Instead of media campaigns, we met people, one on one, in areas where our services are available, at present. To quote an example, we distributed a booklet explaining our services in detail, along with a coconut, betel and supari (much like in a traditional wedding). This elicited good response from the public. We also got the satisfaction of meeting people face to face. We are advertising in places where our services are currently available. We plan to launch a full-fledged media campaign, shortly.
