King Of Good Times - What do new Telecom Operators need to do?

I was traveling to Gurgaon the other day in Kingfisher and had this crazy thought which I wanted to jot down. No analysis has gone into it, and hence I dont claim this would be the right approach. However, there are just my thoughts jotted down for posterity (I may laugh off some of these in a future blog, but thats for the future)

So, while sitting in the flight I was considering the approach taken by Kingfisher. At a time when all the airlines were going low cost, Mr. Mallya came up with a luxury 5-Star rated airline. Under normal business analysis, this should've been considered a blunder - a business risk no one would be willing to take. However, this airline gets rated "The Best Airline for 3 years in a row". Why? What have we missed in our business analysis? Isn't low cost the way ahead?

Lets see what Kingfisher promises:
- Better adherence to timings / Fewer delays
- Better looking airhostesses (though I've seen good-looking air-hosts on Air Sahara, but well, thats just an observation)
- Better in-flight entertainment
- A business-man travels Kingfisher just for the impression arriving in 5-Star rated airline over arriving in a low cost airline (Just like he'd stay in a 5-star hotel to impress. I dont think I can explain that, but I guess you get the point)

All-in-all, its a package deal of both tangible and in-tangible value-adds. And that has been the multi-pronged approach which has helped Kingfisher become a very successful airline; even though it is still amongst the higher priced ones.

Shifting the scenario a bit to a domain Im a little more familiar with: telecom. A number of operators are entering the fairly crowded telecom / ISP domain. What does it take for an operator to displace & become one of the top 5?

Coverage:
I think the first thing that most of us would think of is the coverage. However, taking a very conservative view, it will take a new operator atleast 1 yr to deploy and provide a pan-India coverage akin to any of the existing operators. Also, due to the poor network quality in the 1st year of operation due to poor coverage, retaining subscribers going to be difficult and they will observe a high subscriber churn.

Value-added services (VAS):
Many of the oft used VAS such as CRBT, voice SMS, Televoting, WAP are already available with the existing operators.

So, what is the multi-pronged approach the new operators have to use to be amongst the top 5:
1. Collaborate: If you cant beat them, join them. They will never be able to beat the coverage provided by existing infrastructure. So, instead of investing in new infra (both active & passive), lease it out - maybe even to a high ration of 80:20 with 80% of infra leased.

2. VAS: Invest in trials of VAS services with organizations doing R&D. This is the only way to access VAS & provide a 1st-in-the-country experience.

3. PR: Advertise - their strengths, their advantages, their experience from different countries. Most of these operators will easily be able to hold to their clientele from any of their existing countries like UAE, Russia, Germany, .... esp the UAE

4. MS: Managed Services - thats the way to go. Dont bother about the operational details of the network, bother with just the business aspects. Keep you focus.

5. Customer Care: Provide the best in class customer care. This is something which is being handled by current operators, but can be done much better. This can be a great value-add.

To summarise, the key focus should reside on the most important aspects - business, customers, services. Leave the rest to folks who know and they will take care of things.


P.S.: Im writing this at 10:31p.m. after working upto 2a.m. practically every day of the last week. No further comments!