Grabbing New Customers, Sacrificing Qualities
Almost all cellular operators in Indonesia right now are promoting their incredible low tariff to attract new subscribers. We may see their advertisement in various media such as: Free call for 3 months (Smart Telecom), Rp 1/call (Axis World), Free call and SMS (XL, actually from 12am – 6 am), Rp 0.5/second (Telkomsel), Rp 9/sec for 1 minute, then free (Mobile-8), Rp 60/call (HCPT), Rp 1/character for SMS (Bakrie). The customers become confuse which operator is suitable for him/her. Will he/she try every operator? Of course not.
As written in previous posting value-communication and standard-quality-of-services, several service providers’ networks are not ready to serve such number of new subscribers. Hence their quality of service drop significantly.
According to the survey conducted by Sharing Vision on April 2008, the Indonesian customers’ dissatisfactions rise by significant number both for GSM (global system for mobile communication) and CDMA (code division multiple access) subscribers. The survey items consist of service features, network response and the clarity of the voice. The figures are 7%, 19% and 16% respectively. This figures are far above the same survey on August 07, which only 3%, 5% and 2% respectively.
The survey also noted that the customers are fooled by the advertisements. They feel that operators seemed to hide some extra cost in their tariff. On each advertisement there is a star (*) which mention that terms and condition applied. It means that there is a special condition when the tariff applied such as on-net call, time of call, for special product only, etc.
So, the tariff war has result not only the drop in quality of services but also disappointed customers. All customers now will experience the low quality signal, drop call, call congestion, undelivered or delay SMS, etc.
In operator side, what have they got? New subscribers only. As the tariffs are going down to the lowest level, how much money can they earn from such numbers of new subscribers? In my opinion, tariff war has damaged both the customers and the operators. Do you think so?
We are waiting for regulator to fix up the mess in Indonesian Cellular Telecommunication. The ministry rules on Minimum Standard of Quality will be applied started on July 21st 2008. Since then, hopefully we can have a better telecommunication services.
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