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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
As a means to increase its subscriber base, Idea has launched a “Free Insurance Scheme” for its customers only in Kolkata and West Bengal circle. The move enables Idea customers to avail free accidental insurance benefits. However, the offer is extended only to new customers who will take a new SIM card of the operator.
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As of now, the company hasn’t announced any plans of rolling out the insurance offer to existing customers. This is purely a means to gain new customers for the telecom operator, especially due to the fact that Idea’s new customer additions was low at 0.92 million in March, April, and May 2016. On the other hand, Bharti Airtel registered more than 5.64 million new subscribers in the same period.
Why Idea reports low subscriber addition?
In the last five years, Idea Cellular had emerged as the top gainer from mobile number portability, attracting almost as many subscribers as its bigger rivals such as Airtel and Vodafone, helping it to grow from 40 million mark to touch 175 million marks.
However, Idea lacks in 4G space. The inadequate spectrum forced Idea to launch 4G on small amount of airwaves while the market leader Airtel is already using band 40, offering better download speeds. Apparently, the data focused customers are porting to better 4G operator to gain better data services, resulted in low new subscriber addition to Idea.
Idea is also behind offering content apps and other add-on services, pushing it further behind. For a comparison, Airtel focuses on these additional services such as free Wynk series attracting more young crowds to Airtel.
