Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) are the four active telecom service providers in India who are directly selling services to consumers. All of these telcos have been after gaining new users to increase their subscriber market share for the last few years. But for now, the telcos seem to focus more on their average revenue per user (ARPU) figure than the number of customers they are adding. Regardless, adding new subscribers would never feel bad to either of these companies. There’s one thing that these telcos can do if they want to add more customers very aggressively.
Netflix With Prepaid Plans
One way to go about getting the attention of new customers is to do something that no one is doing. None of the telecom operators in India is offering users a Netflix bundled prepaid plan right now. Maybe that’s where the telcos can do something and add in the Netflix Mobile plan for their customers. Yes, the pricing of such plans would be slightly expensive, but it would mutually benefit Netflix and the telcos. Netflix is also having a hard time growing in the Indian market; thus, maybe this could be a good route for the over-the-top (OTT) platform.
Bundled Services Such as Airtel Black
Another way the telcos can grow aggressively is by offering bundled services to the users. Bharti Airtel is already doing it through Airtel Black. It also allows the telcos to grow other verticals of their business. Vodafone Idea can especially use it to grow You Broadband, its fiber broadband business across the nation.
Offer Seamless 4G Services
This goes without saying that the most basic service that a user would want from his/her telecom operator is seamless 4G services. Without good 4G services, none of the above-mentioned benefits is going to make any difference for the user.
BSNL can still play in the market gap and focus on select areas to start with for offering 4G services. The state-run telco would be able to attract many low-paying customers to its subscriber base, something that Jio did when it came to market with its 4G services.
