TRAI sent a directive today to telecom operators directing them to change the way majority of Value Added Services are sold in India.
Ring Back Tone service (aka Hello Tunes/Caller Tunes/Welcome Tunes etc) has a feature on many networks that a user can press * while calling a person on same network and listening ring back to copy it as his/her own ring back. TRAI “figured out” this has generated in significant number of wrong provisioning as user does not know if it is going to cost her some cost. Whoops !
Though it acted like a good content discovery tool but it probably generated enough noise for TRAI to suggest extra confirmation on it.
Secondly, many VAS are offered to user by an interactive dial out call (Out Bound Dialer ’s Call , OBD) in which user listens to about the service, its charges and even options of content. If user wants to activate the service, he is asked to press a key to select and to reconfirm and avoid any confusion a second confirmation key is asked so that any chance of pressing a key by mistake are avoided.
This has been working good, giving users a chance to know about service and content which sits inside the network. No promotion method could peer it as this is very simple (in local language, detailed) and even has experience of content (like listening the exact song clip) which user can get by paying clearly stated amount. A confirmation of charging and suggesting to recheck eliminates possibility of erratic provisioning.
Yesterday, I was on panel of Convergence India’s VAS in Indian telecom industry and had a chance to see Telecom Value Added Services Industry’s challenges. Here is my take:
Content has gone thru the cycles of being freely available (on internet) to (sometimes insanely) priced (on today’s telecom networks). I love getting into arguments if this is about keeping it all free or keeping it paid at right value (read: right pricing but not zero).
I loved reading this article in TIME magazine, How to save your newspaper, which you will love reading as content buff. I have been looking with whole lot of commercial interest at content from pre-internet (very little), internet (most of it’s incarnation) and telecom (virtually from start of it at all) days.
One thing I fully believe is If there is an easy payment method, users will pay.
Best case in point is India’s digital music industry on telecom networks. My estimate puts it a $60M+ per month business.
More later, Also what do you think about paid content?
I am using the Blackberry Flip these days and I moved to this from Blackberry bold and before that I used iPhone (first cut) for a while.
I now know that instead of polling-based-email I need a push-email device. Incidentally blackberry does it best and iPhone hack still does not get integrated to enterprise email (we use Google App).
Another important feature is form factor. A big bulky handhald (read: B*B Bold) is skip for me. I like to keep it “hidden” or near to hidden in my hand/pocket.
Third imp factor is music which I can play in my car/take with me and so on. So simply larger HDD does not work but connection of it in my car is equally imp . Either FM transmitter or standard jack which my car could support would do.
Finally, I add app store/app as my last in wish list as I know the most of apps I use are still web/wml/xml based so they can be carried anywhere. A device app which is cool is fancy for few days, rest of days you are struggling with memory and most use app ( in my case messaging). This keeps iPhone 3G out anyways.
the choice lately came between Blackberry Storm (misses wifi ! so no-go ), Palm Pre and an-unknown-next version of iPhone.
Just in case if you haven’t seen the Palm pre yet, here is the video for you.
I am getting convinced that Palm could do the trick with Palm Pre. Did you not love the video and think it is cooler than iPhone? Read more »
Starting from setting up the revenue share business model (first in the industry) to using the telecom device and network to deliver that extra value, I can never say that we have done what we wanted.
In a country of billions, where mobile user base will be 500 million, we are learning the needs of the consumer and best suited methods to fulfill them, first and fast.
We never needed to “get inspired” from any company’s business/idea. We set out towards our goal and saw many following the same route.
Instead of any one’s success we have tried learning from their failures and our mistakes.
Starting from setting up the revenue share business model (first in the industry) to using the telecom device and network to deliver that extra value, I can never say that we have done what we wanted.