TELECOM | Cheaper prices are good. But higher, unlimited access speeds are better says Ahmad Humeid.
A war of unprecedented proportions is being waged between Jordan’s telecom companies these days. Call them the mobile and ADSL price wars. That’s what they are: the fight over who can deliver a lower price. All the mobile carriers and all the major ISPs are running big ad campaigns. It is not uncommon these days to see five pages of ads by one mobile company trying to grab our attention and prove to us that they indeed are the company that delivers more talk per piaster. The competition is hot!
Then, there are the various ADSL and ‘internet access by the minute’ campaigns. The ADSL theme seems to be centred on the lowering of service setup fees from 60 to 25 JD to lure new customers to subscribe. These campaigns are bringing the internet access sector to the forefront of out attention again.
Notable is also Jordan Telecom’s stepped up effort to bring its ‘double play’ Livebox service to customers. The company has recently started distributing a direct marketing package that contains a neat animated promotion on a CD that explains the benefit of the Livebox service.
Price wars are good for consumers. Lower prices are always welcome news. Competition is also good for the companies who, at least in theory, should become more effective organizations under market pressure.
But it’s time to shift gears. When will telecoms move from price wars to feature wars. And when will they move from a feverish campaign to acquire new customers to a realization that better serving their existing customer base is equally, if not more, important?
The mobile companies seem to understand this, as they launch new services and customer tailored packages. But the ISPs are clearly lagging behind.
Let’s talk, for example, about bandwidth. The top internet speed for ADSL internet access is still 1Mbit (with 128 Kbps being offered as an entry level option). Downloads are capped at a certain limit (between 5 and 12 GB per month for home users according to chosen plan). Nothing in the recent ISP wars is changing anything about that.
When one sees European companies, offering entry level ADSL access at 7 Euros/month for a 2Mbit unlimited usage plan one just gets depressed! And don’t even look at the Korean or Singaporean market where speeds above 10Mbit are becoming normal.
Clearly, the next frontier for Jordanian telecoms is to deliver a higher speed of access. For that to happen, certain infrastructural hurdles and bandwidth sources/cost issues need to be overcome. That’s what the ISPs seem to be saying.
The other issue is quality of service. The two components of that are consistency of the bandwidth delivered and the level of customer service. A realization has to set in at the ISP level that what they are providing is as important as the electricity and water utilities that we take for granted. When email and fast web access are critical work tools, prolonged access speed deteriorations become extremely annoying. Recent studies have shown that Jordanian small and medium sized enterprises are increasingly depending on the internet for communication. This is no joke.
Recently, a reader has reported to me calling the sales personnel at his ISP asking about the possibility of getting more that 1Mbit ADSL access at home. The reply from the person on the other end of the line was something like “Are you serious? Why do you need more than 1Mbit? A home user never needs more than that”. Which brings us to the last point. ISPs need to better train their people to understand the needs and demands of novices and power users alike. The quality of customer services remains a major challenge, not just for telecoms but across the entire Jordanian corporate landscape.
Comments
8 responses to “Watching the telecom price wars, waiting for the feature wars”
Very true, the cost of customer acquisition is almost always higher than the cost of customer retention. That’s exactly why companies are investing heavily in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and it’s seen as equally important as investing in marketing.
I hear you
Really thank you for bringing this up
Allow me to tell you about my painful experience with ISP’s. Not long ago, I decided that I wanted ADSL at home to save myself the silly phone bills with dial up plans, and I had to pay JD 106 for JT in set up fees + JD 30 for technicians for installation + JD 54 for the ISP company for 2 months in advance, and paid JD 27/month after that till one of these ISP’s burned the price down to 18.56/month, and don’t forget JT monthly fees as well.
As for ISP service; not only they limit the bandwidth and download/month, but also if you exceed a certain size of downloads per day, they will drop your speed from 100 to something like 60-64; try logging in your email with that. Even a dial up is better than that, and when you call; they give you a stupid remark like: “what exactly are you downloading?” .. and he continues that the minute I exceed the daily limit, I am marked as a heavy user and my speed is lowered by default .. and I mean; what’s it to them? I have a router and 4 machines connected to the ADSL at home, so what is so strange about heavy usage?
I apologize for the long comment Ahmad, but really you hit the nail right on the head
Dear Ahmad,
Regarding the point of quota-based DSL, I believe there are companies in Jordan that don’t account for the download quota and these quota limitations !!
To Mohamed Eldesoky – what companies are those? please let me know so that I can move to them
Oh my God!
This was exactly the reply I got from some stupid girl (Sales manager), who said: bala shu?Home Us”a”r o beddak 1 Mega?3anjad eb te7ki?
No need to mention their bad phone manners, and bad attitude in general!
O ba3deen ma3 el bad customer service?!Can’t u smile for a once!
More feautres vs. Lower prices?
Jordanians don’t care! They barely use the internet(again,Jordan is not Westren Amman only)Iin order for them to introduce high speed connections for dirt cheap, you must have too many subscribers! Now considering Jordan, where most of its youth serf only Arabic sites, usually those stupid silly Saudi forums talking about a girl being photographed on her finace cell phone who spread it all over the internet after they broke up and stuff!Older generation can’t use their TV sets properly.
I still can’t figure out why English is not taught properly in public schools, meanwhile private schools have mastered it!
Solution? Cancel the connection fee (the JD60 that was recently reduced to JD25) cancel the monthly fees of JTC or reduce it! Make it something like 10JD/month (inclusive) for a 128k would actually get you many subscribers comapred to the JD32/month cost for the 128k!
The JD33 figured is based on the following:
60*0.16+60 = JD70 Setup Fee (JTC) (that is 60+tax 16%)
Divide 70/12 = 5.83 JD/Month
8.9+0.16+8.9 = 10.324 JD/Month Portal fee paid to JTC
160*0.16+160 = 185.3 JD/year Sub. paid to ISP
Divide 185.3/12= 15.47 JD/month
Total = 5.83+10.324+15.47 = 32 JD/month
The internet sector should learn from the cell market!
Firas,
“This was exactly the reply I got from some stupid girl (Sales manager), who said: bala shu?Home Us”a”r o beddak 1 Mega?3anjad eb te7ki?
No need to mention their bad phone manners, and bad attitude in general!”
Let me guess, the ISP is [edited]? :rolleyes: lol
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again sorry for my spammish post
ciao,
I recently take DSL 512kbit from [edited] ISP.On their webpage they have advertise UNLIMITED DOWNLOAD. So OK i call they send agent to my home.I ask him (because i see on other ISP that they reduc speed after 4 GB) is this sure unlimited with no reduction because i need much download. Yes,yes it is!-say agent
Ok,then i take it.
After couple of days agents from JT come and install DSL modem.
Ok i open internet download is good around 50KB/sec and upload 20KB/sec.
Everything was OK for first 7 days (i make 40GB download) after i see my speed slow up to 30KB/sec.First i think maybe servers from where i download are overloaded or something.But after another 10 days my speed slow down to 6KB/sec!!Slower then dial up.
So now I call them and say what this,are you reducing my speed?!
No,no try reset DSL modem-say operator.
I say No help,same speed!I want to talk with director.I called them 100 times in 3 days until they admit that they reduce my speed because i am making too much download.
I say your advertise is UNLIMITED download.
Yes i understand you but you are not normal user,too much download,normal user download 10-15GB per month..and like this was only answers i got.Currently my speed is 4KB/sec and I am very angry.
I lived in Croatia and had DSL in there for around 30JD/month with 2Mbit/sec and unlimited download.