Another year passes by Indian telecom was filled with many ups and downs many good friends lost their jobs in Telecom in 2013 but still there is always a ray of hope that telecom in India will be better in coming days.... as far as i see 2013 was relative a bad year for Indian Telecom I don't know how many of them will agree with it ..
Though in 2013, what we thought MNP will make huge difference in the entire market share but it didn't create a big impact the overall subscriber growth if you look in 2013 was very less. People sticked to existing operator we can call it loyalty or they never bothered much to shift.
Quality of Networks:
In 2013 the quality of network has degraded so bad that most of the operators never cared about voice quality or call drops they were like .." sab chaltha hai attitude .." Customers were suffering and may be operators also didn't took such things seriously and customers was taking the burden..
FDI in Telecom
Then there was much hyped about FDI but nothing is gonna change or help Indian Telecom currently operators like Vodafone, MTS, Aircel and Uninor are almost in the 70 - 74% threshold of the allowed FDI limit so we can't see FDI as a saviour of Indian telecom.
CDMA in India:
Should we says CDMA Is dead in India, how many of them are still using it even operators who have CDMA license are not cared about it much more ... though if we see there are still many people who use CDMA network still but don't know what brings 2014 for them operators like MTS are trying to rope it more and more subscribers by REVB technology but still something is missing that is making users not to opt ..may be users need a better CDMA handset ..
Telecom Tariffs:
If you look closely at the overall tariff chart of all operator last year every operator was in the verge of raising tariff but neither we can't complain anything either cuz they are also doing business and even they need to sustain in the market, but what really hurts the sentiments of end-user is the monopoly of AVOID group the sad part is if One operator from AVOID group makes any hike in tariff or changes the rest of them follows it this is really killing the competition. The best example is Airtel myPlan and launch of i-Plan from Idea.
3G ICRA issue:
The biggest blow came to 3G operators when DoT slapped a penalty of Rs. 350 crore on Bharti Airtel for violating license conditions and offering 3G services via Intra-Circle roaming pacts which according to DoT is illegal. Later in April, similar penalties were imposed on Vodafone and Idea Cellular wherein the companies were asked to pay Rs550 crore and Rs300 crore respectively. End of the day we subscribers have to suffer but who has to be blamed for this operators or law makers ?
4G in India:
Even the much hyped Airtel 4G launch in India didn't bring any cheer to users, be it in terms of device or tariff it was a big fail may be we can say the pricing was not right and the coverage was not up to the mark hope there are more takers for 4G in 2014.
Can Data be future of Indian Telecom :
One thing is sure data market is booming every second in India more and more new smartphones are being launched and people are going mobile. 2013 saw huge raise in data traffic . This literally killed SMS people are more dependent on online chat services like whatsapp and BBM and others . This had also created a major revenue drop among operators. This is not the only thing even TRAI stringent rule on Bulk SMS has impacted.
What to expect in 2014 :
a) 4G launch by Reliance Jio.
b) Some major merger by big operators.
c) Voice tariff will still go high.
d) Mobile-Data Tariff can come down.
e) 4G feature rich devices will be launched.
f) We can see some price drop in high-end phones.
g) Broadband tariffs can increase.
If you think i have missed any points that you think is important do let me know via comments ...
What you can see in TelecomTalk:
I don't want to make any big promises but i will make sure at least before the end of Q1 you will see some surprises from TelecomTalk, but i need some help from you if you are interested to take TelecomTalk to the next level drop me a mail at tarun[@]telecomtalk.info . :) .
Last but not the least i would personally like to thank all my TT Team mates... Experts, Tipsters, Analyst and beloved Readers what we are now is because of you, we will always strive hard and continue to bring all updates exclusive analysis, behind the scene tariff plans and much more in coming days.
Hope 2014 brings good sales and subscribers for all operators and creates a good competitive environment.
Thanks for reading and a very Happy New Year we hope 2014 brings great joy and success for you and for your family. Thank you for supporting us.
