Description
BSNL is India's oldest and largest communication service provider (CSP). It had a customer base of 95 million as of June 2011.[6] It has footprints throughout India except for the metropolitan cities of Mumbai and New Delhi, which are managed by Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL).
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (known as BSNL, India Communications Corporation Limited) is a public sector communications company in India. It is the India's largest telecommunication company with 24% market share as on March 31, 2008. Its headquarters are at Bharat Sanchar Bhawan, Harish Chandra Mathur Lane, Janpath, New Delhi. It has the status of Mini-ratna - a status assigned to reputed Public Sector companies in India. BSNL is India's oldest and largest Communication Service Provider (CSP). Currently BSNL has a customer base of 72.34 million (Basic &Mobile telephony). It has footprints throughout India except for the metropolitan cities of Mumbai and New Delhi which are managed by MTNL.
BSNL As on March 31, 2008 BSNL commanded a customer base of 31.55 million Wireline, 4.58 million CDMA-WLL and 36.21 million GSM Mobile subscribers. BSNL's earnings for the Financial Year ending March 31, 2007 stood at INR 397.15b (US$ 9.67 b) with net profit of INR 78.06b (US$ 1.90 billion). Today, BSNL is India's largest Telco and one of the largest Public Sector Undertaking with estimated market value of $ 100 Billion. The company is planning an IPO with in 6 months to offload 10% to public.
Type Availability Founded Revenue Owner Key people
Communication Service Provider Countrywide Mumbai except Delhi &
19th century, incorporated 2000 US$ 9.67 billion (2007) The Government of India Kuldeep Goyal(CMD)
Website www.bsnl.in www.bsnl.co.in
Vision, Objectives:
BSNL's Vision is to become the largest Telecom Service Provider in Asia. Its Mission is to provide world class, state-of-art technology telecom services to its customers on demand at competitive prices and world class telecom infrastructure in its area of operation and contribute to the growth of India's economy. BSNL's Objectives are to be Lead Telecom Services Provider, provide quality and reliable fixed telecom service to our customer and increase customer's confidence, provide mobile telephone service of high quality and become the No. 1 GSM operator in its area of operation, provide point of interconnection to other service provider as per their requirement promptly and facilitate Research & Development activity in the country. BSNL also has the objective to contribute towards National Plan Target of 500 million subscriber base for India by 2010, Broadband customers base of 20 million in India by 2010 as per Broadband Policy 2004, Providing telephone connection in villages as per government policy and Implementation of Triple play as a regular commercial proposition.
Human Resources Development
With a corporate philosophy that considers Human Resource as the most prized assets of the organization, it's natural for BSNL to continually hone employee skills, enhance their knowledge and their expertise and their aspirations to fruition. Even as BSNL goes about conducting its business activities, it lays emphasis on constant enhancement of knowledge and skills through regular training programmes. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has a vast reservoir of highly skilled and experienced work force of about 3,57,000 personnel. We believe that our staff, which is one of the best trained manpower in the telecom sector, is our biggest asset. We believe that our future depends on our staff who provide services to our valued customers and stay in touch with them. To meet the technological challenges, employees are trained for technology upgradation, modernization, computerization etc in BSNL's training Centers spread across Country. These centers are properly equipped with the requisite infrastructure facilities such as Lecture rooms, modern audio-visual aids, libraries, hostels etc.
Finance
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, the largest Public Sector Undertaking of the Nation, is certainly on a financial ground that's sound. The Company has a net worth of Rs. 88,128 crores (US$ 22.02 billion), authorised equity capital of Rs. 10,000 crores (US $ 2.50 billion), Paid up Equity Share Capital of Rs. 5,000 crores (US $ 1.25 billion) and Revenues is Rs. 38053 crores (US $ 9.51 billion) in 2007-08. (Note: 1 US $ = 40.02 INR as on 31-03-2008) Revenue Revenue earned by BSNL during last five years
Gross Investment in Fixed Assets
The BSNL is making substancial investment year to year for its network expension and mordenisation. During the current financial year BSNL has made the gross investment of Rs. 7180 crore ( US $ 1.79 billion) in Fixed Assets. These investments have been financed by the internal accruals.
Cumulative Capital Outlay
BSNL has Gross Fixed Assets of over Rs. 124578 Crores (US $ 31.13 billion) as on 31.03 .2008.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has got net fixed assets valuing more than Rs. 54698 Crores (US $ 13.67 billion), which are in the form of Land, Buildings Cables, Apparatus & Plants etc. as on 31.03.2008.
Growth Plan
BSNL's future plan include a fast expansion programme of increasing the present 34 million lines to twice that number by 2005 and some 120 million lines by 2010. The shift in demand from voice to data domination, and from wireline to wireless, has revolutionized the very nature of the network. BSNL has already set in place several measures that should enable it to evolve into a fully integrated multi- operator by 2005 and its incumbent status, size, infrastructure and human resource should certainly, give it a distinct advantage. 1) Consolidation of the network and maintaining high quality of service comparable to International standards is the key aim of the Growth Plan. Objective of the plan are: 2) The telephone connection shall be provided on demand and it shall be sustained. 3) The Network shall be made fully digital. All the technologically obsolete analog exchanges will be replaced with digital exchanges. 4) Digital connectivity shall be made available to all the exchanges by 2007. 5) Extensive use of Optical fiber System in the local, Junction and long distance network so as to make available sufficient bandwidth for the spread of Internet and Information technology. 6) Introduction of latest telecom services like National directory enquiry, computerization etc.
Meeting the challenges
BSNL is committed to provide quality Telecom Services at affordable price to the citizens of the remotest part of the Country. BSNL is making all effort to ensure that the main objectives of the new Telecom Policy 1999 (salient points indicated below) are achieved: Access to telecommunications is of utmost importance for achievement of the country's social and economic goals. Availability of affordable and effective communications for the citizens is at the core of the vision and goal of the new Telecom policy 1999. Strive to provide a balance between the provision of universal service to all uncovered areas, including the rural areas, and the provision of high-level services capable of meeting the needs of the country's economy;
Encourage development of telecommunication facilities in remote, hilly and tribal areas of the country; Transform in a time bound manner, the telecommunications sector to a greater competitive environment in both urban and rural areas providing equal opportunities and level playing field for all players. During Financial Year 2006-2007 (From April 1, 2006 to March 31, 2007) BSNL has added 9.6 million new customers in various telephone services taking its customer base to 64.8 million. BSNL's nearest competitor Bharti Airtel is standing at a customer base of 39 million. However, despite impressive growth shown by BSNL in recent times, the Fixed line customer base of BSNL is declining. In order to woo back its fixed-line customers BSNL has brought down long distance calling rate under OneIndia plan, however, the success of the scheme is not known. However, BSNL faces bleak fiscal 2006-2007 as users flee, which has been accepted by the CMD BSNL. Presently there is an intense competition in Indian Telecom sector and various Telcos are rolling out attractive schemes and are providing good customer services. However, BSNL being legacy operator and its conversion from a Government Department, earns lot of criticism for its poor customer service. Although in recent past there have been tremendous improvement in working of BSNL, still it is below the Industry's expectations. A large ageing (average age 49 years(appx)) workforce (300,000 strong), which is mostly semi-literate or illiterate is the main reason for the poor customer service. Despite all the limitations of a legacy set-up, the management has been striving hard for the growth of the organisation - and has been able to give a tough and sustained fight to the competition - rather unheard in the Indian PSUs. Although in coming years the retirement profile of the workforce is very fast and around 25% of existing workforce will retire by 2010, still the workforce will be quite large by the industry standards. Quality of the workforce will also remain an issue. However, with the induction of Graduate Engineers in BSNL, the quality of its workforce is expected to enhance extensively. But BSNL has not been able to give Engineer like working atmosphere to its young recruits.
Main Services being provided by BS L
BSNL provides almost every telecom service, however following are the main Telecom Services being provided by BSNL in India:1. Universal Telecom Sevices : Fixed wireline services & Wireless in Local loop (WLL) using CDMA Technology called bfone and Tarang respectively. BSNL is dominant operator in fixed line. As on December 31, 2007, BSNL had 81% marketshare of fixed lines.
BS L Mobile
Pre-paid Mobile 2. Cellular Mobile Telephone Services: BSNL is major provider of Cellular Mobile Telephone services using GSM platform under brandname CellOne. Pre-paid Cellular services of BSNL are know as Excel. As on March 31, 2007 BSNL had 17% share of mobile telephony in the country.
BS L Broadband 3. Internet: BSNL is providing internet as dial-up connection (Sancharnet) as Prepaid, (Netone) as Postpaid and ADSL-Broadband Dataone. BSNL has around 50% marketshare in broadband in India. BSNL has planned aggressive rollout in broadband for current financial year. 4. Intelligent Network (IN): BSNL is providing IN services like tele-voting, toll free calling, premium calling etc BS L land line. : BSNL is the largest telecom operator in India and is known to everybody for Basic Telephony Services for over 100 years. Presently the Plain old, Countrywide telephone service is being provided through 32,000 electronic exchanges, 326 Digital Trunk Automatic Exchanges(TAX), Digitalized Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) all interlinked by over 2.4 lakh km of Optical Fiber Cable, with a host of Phone Plus value additions to our valued Customers.
Telephone Basic Telephone (Bfone) Total umber of connections WLL (Tarang) Total umber of connections Village Public Telephones Total umber of Telephones Public Telephones (Local, STD and Highway) Total umber of Public Telephones a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 5,22,120 a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 46,96,641 a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 3 ,0 1 ,2 2 ,2 6 9
a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8
19,31,182
STD Stations umber of STD Stations a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 33,206
Cellular Service Overview
India's fastest growing cellular service , along with postpaid and prepaid services brings cellular telephony to the masses, through innovative technology and strategic pricing. This ambitious service uses state-of-theart GSM technology to attain global excellence and leadership in business. Our entry into this sector has brought GSM cellular service at an affordable cost to the common man. All serving a single objective, to provide better communication to millions across India. Customers have reposed tremendous faith in BSNL and it has enrolled over 30 Lakh Cellular customers within ten months of launch of Cellular service, an unprecedented mark in Indian Cellular Market.
Mobile Services (As on 30.09.2008)
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Total number of connections District Headquarters covered Total number of villages covered ational Highway covered (Km) State Highway covered (Km) Railway route covered (Km)
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3 ,9 1 ,6 6 ,9 4 3 617 2,74,428 53,230 69,770 39,173
BSNL is India's no. 1 Internet service provider with more than 17 lakh subscribers, providing Internet service throughout the entire country (except in New Delhi and Mumbai) under the brand name of "Sancharnet". Sancharnet provides free all India roaming and enables it's users to access their accounts, using the same access code (172233) and user ID from any where in the Country. In order to make Internet available through out the length and breadth of the Country Internet Dhabas are being commissioned at all the Block Headquarters. BSNL has also started DIAS and Account free internet access (CLI based) facility onfew select cities recently. BSNL has launched "SANCHARNET CARD" recently. The Sancharnet Card" is a prepaid Internet Access Card with following features for customers: Self-register for internet access with your choice of userid Renew your existing Sancharnet Account Wide Range of Internet Access Packages Web-Hosting Service is also provided by the BSNL. It allows customers to host their static or dynamic web-sites on BSNL servers. Web hosting service provides basic features like Web-space (Data Storage) on servers for hosting HTML pages with browser supported MIME types, Primary or Secondary Domain Name Hosting, Server Side Scripting: Perl, Java Servlets, JSP, Database Access( MySQL), Email Access and Web-email, Multiple Email IDs as per the plan, Ftp access for uploading and downloading pages as per the plan, Continuous usage billing for Web, Messaging and FTP etc.
Web Co-location Service: BSNL provides Internet services to the customers located in about 450 locations. Web Co-location is an easy and cost effective solution to house a company's powerful infrastructure without losing the administrative control on the equipments. Web Co-location eliminates much of the Infrastructure costs as well as the maintenance cost of such equipments apart from avoiding the last mile problems. Web Co-location enables customer s equipment/ Servers to be treated as a part and parcel of the ISP network enjoying all the facilities as the ISP servers.
SMS and BULK SMS Services It allows you to send SMS using Sancharnet Email service. Sending SMS using Sancharnet account is very easy and cost effective. There is no need of a mobile phone to send SMS. Moreover it is easy to type a message on computer keyboard.
BSNL is in the process of commissioning of a world class, multi-gigabit, multiprotocol, convergent IP infrastructure through National Internet Backbone-II (NIB-II), that will provide convergent services through the same backbone and broadband access network. The Broadband service will be available on DSL technology (on the same copper cable that is used for connecting telephone), on a countrywide basis spanning 198 cities. In terms of infrastructure for broadband services NIB-II would put India at par with more advanced nations. The services that would be supported includes always-on broadband access to the Internet for residential and business customers, Content based services, Video multicasting, Video-on-demand and Interactive gaming, Audio and Video conferencing, IP Telephony, Distance learning, Messaging: plain and feature rich, Multisite MPLS VPNs with Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. The subscribe will be able to access the above services through Subscriber Service Selection System (SSSS) portal. Key Objectives To provide high speed Internet connectivity (upto 8 Mbps) To provide Virtual Private Network (VPN) service to the broadband customers To provide dial VPN service to MPLS VPN customers. To provide multicast video services, video-on-demand, etc. through the Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS).
BS L Managed etwork Services
BSNL Managed Network Services is a fully managed Secured Data services, providing a truly one-stop and a complete experience that significantly reduces risks and complexities involved in implementing and maintaining a robust IP network. It brings together all of a business' communications needs in an integrated offering. With the promise of an integrated platform with one-stop convenience and fully managed experience, BSNL Managed
To ensure one stop solution for all connectivity needs, better manageability and accountability, BSNL offers Managed Network Services which includes Enterprise Broadband, Internet and MPLS VPN connectivity as completely managed offering. With an integrated service option, you would enjoy benefit of an SLA backed network services with convenience of being supported by single helpdesk number for your network connectivity, hardware related issues. Other benefits include: End-to-end Turn key Implementation (including CPE) Proactive management through state of the art NoC Periodic reporting facilitating trend analysis Capability to provide VPN connectivity from any part of the country. Managed Firewall as well as IP Sec
Leased Line
To transmit data between computer and electronic information devices, BSNL provides data communication services to its subscribers. It offers a choice of high, medium and low speed leased data circuits as well as dial-up lines. Bandwidth is available on demand in most of the cities. Managed leased Line Network (MLLN) offers flexibility of providing circuits with speeds of n x 64 Kbps up to 2 Mbps. Useful for internet leased lines and international principle Leased Lines (IPLCs) For dedicated point to point speech, private wire, tele-printer and data circuits are given on lease basis. Leased circuits are provided to subscribers for internal communication between their offices/factories at various sites within a city/town or different cities/town on point to point basis, or on a network basis interconnecting the various sites. Managed Leased Line Service(MLLN): The MLLN is a Managed Leased Line Network system which is proposed to provide Leased line connectivity. The State-ofthe-art technology equipment MLLN is designed mainly for having effective control, monitor on the leased line so that the down time is very much minimised.
Audio Conferencing
Audio Conferencing service allows multiple participants to converse with each other regardless of their location through the normal fixed line telephone or cellular phone. An audio conference subscriber can add two or more participants in a particular conference. The customers can schedule their audio conferences through the Web or through IVR. The service is available to existing BSNL subscribers only. Any conference scheduled can have both Dial-in and Dial-out participants. Conference can be scheduled one time or standing. A standing conference is always on. The authorized participants has just to dial in a particular telephone number followed by a password to enter into a conference. On demand conference can be made. The chairperson can invite several users one by one in the conference without using the web. He/she has to just dial a number followed by certain number and the called party number for doing a conference call.
Video Conferencing
Video Conferencing service allows multiple participants to converse with each other regardless of their location through the video end-points or Personal computers. It involves Video and Audio communication. It's about connecting people. A video conference subscriber can add two or more video participants in a particular conference. The customers can schedule their video conferences through the Web. The video conferencing service can be availed by any user through IP or ISDN interface. The service is available to existing BSNL subscribers only.
The Video end-point required for conferencing should be ITU - H.323/H.320 compliant. Any conference scheduled can have both Dial-in and Dial-out participants on either IP or ISDN. The customer will have to procure the video end-point from the market. Personal computer user can download the software called "PVX" from BSNL's Video Conferencing Portal to avail the Video Conferencing facility with their web-cam. This software will be made available shortly at BSNL's Video Conferencing Portal.
BS L Web Conferencing
BSNL Web Conferencing Service is made available on your desktop and enables you to conduct virtual meetings with your partners, suppliers, employers etc. It has the innovative feature such as Persistent meeting rooms, which simulates physical room environment wherein authorized users can enter their designated rooms the way do in physical meetings. The users can access the rich features, apart from multi-point, multimedia (Audio, Video & Data) conferencing service, BSNL web Conferencing service provides very powerful data conferencing tools to enhance collaboration among users such as sharing of PowerPoint Presentation, Whiteboard, Documents, & Chat facility amongst the conference participants, which will significantly aid in increasing the effectiveness of your business meetings.
Inet
Change your way of doing business by networking your computers, data terminals, hosts and LANs in different offices and manufacturing units both within the country and outside, through Inet - an X.25 based packet switched Public Data Network of BSNL . It provides extremely cost effective and reliable solution to your High Speed Wide Area Networking needs. Inet can be used in the following applications : Electronic Mail Services Corporate Communications Information Retrieval Database Services Remote Job Applications Credit Card Verifications INTERNET connectivity
TELEGRAPH
Telegram is a common man's communication need. The first telegraph message was transmitted live on Morse through electrical signals between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour on 5th November 1850.The Telegraph services were opened to public during February 1855. To implement modern technology in the telegraph network a National Message Switching Network Plan was prepared in 1986. The growth of Telegraph services has been affected owing to the impact of other non-voice services and improvement in density of telephones, nevertheless the service has social relevance and historical importance. etwork All the cities(300) and towns (4689) as per 1991 census and a large number of villages have access to Public Telegraph Services through Telegraph Offices. Services Telegraph services are being provided through Telegraph offices, Telecom Centers and Bureau FAX centers. A number of new types of telegraph services such as Store & forward message switching system, electronic key-board concentrator , electronic teleprinters and formatted terminals have been introduced. Express Money Transfer Service. It aims at delivering money within few hours after rendering at the counter of a telegraph office was introduced in A.P. Telecom Circle on experimental basis. This service is being made available at many of the stations in Tamilnadu, Kerala, Karnataka , Maharashtra and metro cities of Delhi & Calcutta. Apart from the facility of booking of telegrams, following services are also offered in some Telegraph Offices: FAX Service is available at many selected telegraph offices for national and international outgoing and incoming messages A new class of telegram "Fax Telegrams" is available for public. Booking of telegrams on phone. Delivery of telegram over Phone if the same is specified in the address of the telegram. Delivery of telegrams through Fax, if the telegrams contain fax numbers in the address.
BS L Present & Future.
Since its corporatisation in October 2000, BSNL has been actively providing connections in both Urban and Rural areas and the efficiency of the company has drastically improved from the days when one had to wait for years to get a phone connection to now when one can get a connection in even hours. Pre-activated Mobile connections are available at many places across India. BSNL has also unveiled very costeffective Broadband internet access plans (DataOne) targeted at homes and small businesses. At present BSNL enjoy's around 45% of market share of ISP services. Year of Broadband 2007 : 2007 has been declared as "Year of Broadband" in India and BSNL is in the process of providing 5 million Broadband connectivity by the end of 2007. BSNL has upgraded existing Dataone (Broadband) connections for a speed of up to 2 Mbit/s without any extra cost. This 2 Mbit/s broadband service is being provided by BSNL at a cost of just US$ 11.7 per month(as of 21/07/2008 and at a limit of 2.5GB monthly limit with 0200-0800 hrs as no charge period). Further, BSNL is rolling out new Broadband services as Triple play (telecommunications). : BSNL is planning to increase its customer base to 108 million customers by 2010. With the frantic activity in the communication sector in India, the target appears achievable, however due to intense competition in Indian Telecom sector in recent past BSNL's growth has slowed down. BSNL is pioneer of Rural Telephony in India. BSNL has recently bagged 80% of US$ 580 m (INR 2,500 crores) Rural Telephony project of Government of India.
BS L gears up for competition
The entry of the private sector has not unnerved BSNL. If anything, it has only strengthened its resolve to stay at the top. The recent corporatisation has helped BSNL in not only mobilising funds but also in speeding up the decision making process and implementing strategies for combating competition. The corporation's subscriber base, which has gone up six-fold during the last decade, is currently working towards building up an image of being a friendly-service provider. With this aim it has recently initiated specialised training programmes to bring about an attitudinal change in the staff towards dealing with customers and make the organisation more flexible and customer oriented. BSNL, which recently slashed the rates of long-distance telephone call rates by more than 60 per cent to preempt competition, realises that cutting charges is just one factor in retaining customers. Quality of service would be just as decisive if not more. "Apart from reducing costs, we are interested in providing better quality of service to meet competition with our trained manpower," says N. Chenchiah, General Manager, Marketing. "Competition from national long-distance players has just started." Of course, BSNL has the advantage of being an early starter and enjoyed the monopolistic benefits all these years.
BS L On Top?
You probably didn't need an investment banker to tell you this, but somebody's got to do the job: ICICI Securities (I-Sec)saddled with the onerous responsibility of "synergy consultant"-has tabled two options for the merger of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL). Either BSNL buys out MTNL or MTNL picks up 51 per cent of BSNL, if not all of it. That, of course, is the simpler part-making the recommendations. Getting somebody to make the decision is turning out to be the tougher part-a meeting scheduled last fortnight to thrash out the options was postponed, with the outgoing Department of Telecommunications (DOT) secretary Nripendra Mishra preferring to let his successor do the honours . On paper, it would appear logical for bsnl to buy into MTNL (the government owns all of BSNL and 56.25 per cent in MTNL, which is listed domestically as well as on the New York Stock Exchange). Whilst MTNL is confined to Delhi and Mumbai, BSNL already has a pan-Indian footprint, with a presence in 5,200 cities and 5.4 lakh villages. Naturally, BSNL would have more subscribers too: 46 million, as against mtnl's 4.84 million. As far as investments go too, BSNL is stepping on the gas, with a proposed capital expenditure of Rs 25,000 crore a year for the next three years-and this comes in the wake of the Rs 32,000 crore-plus spent over the past three years. The short point: BSNL can simply go ahead and acquire the government's stake in MTNL. Government sources point out that the intricacies and modalities of various options, valuations and swap ratios will come up only later. "Right now, opinion is being sought from key stakeholders (BSNL and MTNL)." R.S.P. Sinha, Chairman &Managing Director, MTNL, appears to have his problems with MTNL being acquired. "Is BSNL's acquisition of the government's stake in MTNL to be called a merger?" is his favourite question these days. "A merger should be the route-I am okay with a straight or reverse merger." You could argue that the hairsplitting about whether the marriage will be a merger or an acquisition is secondary (though MTNL's 53,000 employees and BSNL's 3.5 lakh workforce may disagree); after all, the purpose of the amalgamation is to create a bigger, more efficient giant that can dance. "The two PSUs have not performed well-in the last four years, their share of expansions has been only 20 per cent, with 80 per cent coming from private players, of a total of 50 million lines," points out Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister for Communications & it. "I want MTNL and BSNL to achieve a target of 50 per cent (80 million lines) in the next three years." That's great, but will somebody bring them together first?
BS L's landmark achievements
BSNL, India's largest telecom service provider, has broken all the past records by providing 10 lakh cellular connections in December 2005 alone, thereby adding an unprecedented number of customers to its cellular subscriber base. BSNL has achieved the landmark of providing more than 14 million mobile cellular connections all over the country. In South Zone, BSNL provided more than 4.77 lakh connections. Out of this, more than 2 lakh connections were provided in the state of Kerala, 1.25 lakh connections in the state of Tamil Nadu, and over 75 thousand connections each in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The waiting list for cellular connections in the South Zone has been cleared and now, connections are available 'On Demand'. In the North Zone also, 2.58 lakh connections were provided during December 2005. More than 1.2 lakh connections have been provided in the state of Uttar Pradesh and approximately one lakh connections in the state of Rajasthan. Now, connections are available 'On Demand' in North Zone also. BSNL has 65% of market share in the state of J&K. In the East Zone, BSNL provided 2.68 lakh connections during December 2005. Of these, over one lakh connections have been provided in the state of West Bengal and 62,000 in the state of Bihar. In the North Eastern states, BSNL has a market share of about 70%. 'On Demand' availability of mobile connections in East Zone is expected by the end of January.
MARKETI G STRAGIES
In today's very competitive marketplace a strategy that insures a consistent approach to offering your product or service in a way that will outsell the competition is critical. However, in concert with defining the marketing strategy you must also have a well defined methodology for the day to day process of implementing it. It is of little value to have a strategy if you lack either the resources or the expertise to implement it. In the process of creating a marketing strategy you must consider many factors. Of those many factors, some are more important than others. Because each strategy must address some unique considerations, it is not reasonable to identify 'every' important factor at a generic level. However, many are common to all marketing strategies. Some of the more critical are described below. You begin the creation of your strategy by deciding what the overall objective of your enterprise should be. In general this falls into one of four categories:
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If the market is very attractive and your enterprise is one of the strongest in the industry you will want to invest your best resources in support of your offering. If the market is very attractive but your enterprise is one of the weaker ones in the industry you must concentrate on strengthening the enterprise, using your offering as a stepping stone toward this objective. If the market is not especially attractive, but your enterprise is one of the strongest in the industry then an effective marketing and sales effort for your offering will be good for generating near term profits. If the market is not especially attractive and your enterprise is one of the weaker ones in the industry you should promote this offering only if it supports a more profitable part of your business (for instance, if this segment completes a product line range) or if it absorbs some of the overhead costs of a more profitable segment. Otherwise, you should determine the most cost effective way to divest your enterprise of this offering.
Having selected the direction most beneficial for the overall interests of the enterprise, the next step is to choose a strategy for the offering that will be most effective in the market. This means choosing one of the following 'generic' strategies (first described by Michael Porter in his work, Competitive Advantage).
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A COST LEADERSHIP STRATEGY is based on the concept that you can produce and market a good quality product or service at a lower cost than your competitors. These low costs should translate to profit margins that are higher than the industry average. Some of the conditions that should exist to support a cost leadership strategy include an on-going availability of operating capital, good process engineering skills, close management of labor, products designed for ease of manufacturing and low cost distribution.
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A DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGY is one of creating a product or service that is perceived as being unique "throughout the industry". The emphasis can be on brand image, proprietary technology, special features, superior service, a strong distributor network or other aspects that might be specific to your industry. This uniqueness should also translate to profit margins that are higher than the industry average. In addition, some of the conditions that should exist to support a differentiation strategy include strong marketing abilities, effective product engineering, creative personnel, the ability to perform basic research and a good reputation. A FOCUS STRATEGY may be the most sophisticated of the generic strategies, in that it is a more 'intense' form of either the cost leadership or differentiation strategy. It is designed to address a "focused" segment of the marketplace, product form or cost management process and is usually employed when it isn't appropriate to attempt an 'across the board' application of cost leadership or differentiation. It is based on the concept of serving a particular target in such an exceptional manner, that others cannot compete. Usually this means addressing a substantially smaller market segment than others in the industry, but because of minimal competition, profit margins can be very high.
Pricing Having defined the overall offering objective and selecting the generic strategy you must then decide on a variety of closely related operational strategies. One of these is how you will price the offering. A pricing strategy is mostly influenced by your requirement for net income and your objectives for long term market control. There are three basic strategies you can consider.
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A SKIMMING STRATEGY If your offering has enough differentiation to justify a high price and you desire quick cash and have minimal desires for significant market penetration and control, then you set your prices very high. A MARKET PENETRATION STRATEGY If near term income is not so critical and rapid market penetration for eventual market control is desired, then you set your prices very low. A COMPARABLE PRICING STRATEGY If you are not the market leader in your industry then the leaders will most likely have created a 'price expectation' in the minds of the marketplace. In this case you can price your offering comparably to those of your competitors.
Promotion To sell an offering you must effectively promote and advertise it. There are two basic promotion strategies, PUSH and PULL.
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The PUSH STRATEGY maximizes the use of all available channels of distribution to "push" the offering into the marketplace. This usually requires generous discounts to achieve the objective of giving the channels incentive to promote the offering, thus minimizing your need for advertising. The PULL STRATEGY requires direct interface with the end user of the offering. Use of channels of distribution is minimized during the first stages of
promotion and a major commitment to advertising is required. The objective is to "pull" the prospects into the various channel outlets creating a demand the channels cannot ignore. There are many strategies for advertising an offering. Some of these include:
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Product Comparison advertising In a market where your offering is one of several providing similar capabilities, if your offering stacks up well when comparing features then a product comparison ad can be beneficial. Product Benefits advertising When you want to promote your offering without comparison to competitors, the product benefits ad is the correct approach. This is especially beneficial when you have introduced a new approach to solving a user need and comparison to the old approaches is inappropriate. Product Family advertising If your offering is part of a group or family of offerings that can be of benefit to the customer as a set, then the product family ad can be of benefit. Corporate advertising When you have a variety of offerings and your audience is fairly broad, it is often beneficial to promote your enterprise identity rather than a specific offering.
Distribution You must also select the distribution method(s) you will use to get the offering into the hands of the customer. These include:
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On-premise Sales involves the sale of your offering using a field sales organization that visits the prospect's facilities to make the sale. Direct Sales involves the sale of your offering using a direct, in-house sales organization that does all selling through the Internet, telephone or mail order contact. Wholesale Sales involves the sale of your offering using intermediaries or "middle-men" to distribute your product or service to the retailers. Self-service Retail Sales involves the sale of your offering using self service retail methods of distribution. Full-service Retail Sales involves the sale of your offering through a full service retail distribution channel.
Of course, making a decision about pricing, promotion and distribution is heavily influenced by some key factors in the industry and marketplace. These factors should be analyzed initially to create the strategy and then regularly monitored for changes. If any of them change substantially the strategy should be reevaluated.
The Environment Environmental factors positively or negatively impact the industry and the market growth potential of your product/service. Factors to consider include:
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Government actions - Government actions (current or under consideration) can support or detract from your strategy. Consider subsidies, safety, efficacy and operational regulations, licensing requirements, materials access restrictions and price controls. Demographic changes - Anticipated demographic changes may support or negatively impact the growth potential of your industry and market. This includes factors such as education, age, income and geographic location. Emerging technology - Technological changes that are occurring may or may not favor the actions of your enterprise. Cultural trends - Cultural changes such as fashion trends and life style trends may or may not support your offering's penetration of the market
The Prospect It is essential to understand the market segment(s) as defined by the prospect characteristics you have selected as the target for your offering. Factors to consider include:
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The potential for market penetration involves whether you are selling to past customers or a new prospect, how aware the prospects are of what you are offering, competition, growth rate of the industry and demographics. The prospect's willingness to pay higher price because your offering provides a better solution to their problem. The amount of time it will take the prospect to make a purchase decision is affected by the prospects confidence in your offering, the number and quality of competitive offerings, the number of people involved in the decision, the urgency of the need for your offering and the risk involved in making the purchase decision. The prospect's willingness to pay for product value is determined by their knowledge of competitive pricing, their ability to pay and their need for characteristics such as quality, durability, reliability, ease of use, uniformity and dependability. Likelihood of adoption by the prospect is based on the criticality of the prospect's need, their attitude about change, the significance of the benefits, barriers that exist to incorporating the offering into daily usage and the credibility of the offering.
The Product/Service You should be thoroughly familiar with the factors that establish products/services as strong contenders in the marketplace. Factors to consider include:
• • •
Whether some or all of the technology for the offering is proprietary to the enterprise. The benefits the prospect will derive from use of the offering. The extent to which the offering is differentiated from the competition.
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The extent to which common introduction problems can be avoided such as lack of adherence to industry standards, unavailability of materials, poor quality control, regulatory problems and the inability to explain the benefits of the offering to the prospect. The potential for product obsolescence as affected by the enterprise's commitment to product development, the product's proximity to physical limits, the ongoing potential for product improvements, the ability of the enterprise to react to technological change and the likelihood of substitute solutions to the prospect's needs. Impact on customer's business as measured by costs of trying out your offering, how quickly the customer can realize a return from their investment in your offering, how disruptive the introduction of your offering is to the customer's operations and the costs to switch to your offering. The complexity of your offering as measured by the existence of standard interfaces, difficulty of installation, number of options, requirement for support devices, training and technical support and the requirement for complementary product interface.
MARKET RESEARCH
Market research is generally either primary or secondary. In secondary research, the company uses information compiled from other sources that appears applicable to a new or existing product. The advantages of secondary research are that it is relatively cheap and easily accessible. Disadvantages of secondary research are that it is often not specific to your area of research and the data used can be biased and is difficult to validate. Primary market research involves testing such as focus groups, surveys, field tests, interviews or observation, conducted or tailored specifically to that product.
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Market information
Market information is making known the prices of the different commodities in the market, the supply and the demand. Information about the markets can be obtained in several different varieties and formats. Examples of market information questions are: 1. 2. 3. 4. Who are the customers? Where are they located and how can they be contacted What quantity and quality do they want? When is the best time to sell? Market segmentation
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Market segmentation is the division of the market or population into subgroups with similar motivations. Widely used bases for segmenting include geographic differences, personality differences, demographic differences, use of product differences, and psychographic differences.
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Market trends
The upward or downward movements of a market, during a period of time. The market size is more difficult to estimate if you are starting with something completely new. In this case, you will have to derive the figures from the number of potential customers or customer segments. [Ilar 1998] But besides information about the target market you also need information about your competitor, your customers, products etc. Lastly, you need to measure marketing effectiveness. A few techniques are:
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Customer analysis Choice Modelling Competitor analysis Risk analysis Product research Advertising the research Marketing mix modeling
MARKETI G STRATEGIES OF BS L
1. Introduction.
Our visions begin with our desires.
We all have some visions of ourselves and our future, and that vision creates consequences. More than any other factor, vision affects the choices we make and the way we spend our time.
Visions drive consequences. Principles drive results. Key is to base vision on principles.
Stephen R Covey. It is true for individuals as well as organizations. The strongest form of vision / motivation is to base vision on "What Legacy we want to leave." And to achieve it we must take a principled centered path. History is full of examples that many organizations have vanished grown and vanished overnight as their path to achieve vision was not based on principled way. Vision of the organization can only be translated into reality, if it is shared by one and all. The best way to implement is to involve them in formulation. But even if it is conceived by higher management then it has to be explained to each and every individual of the organization, otherwise it may remain as a showpiece. Marketing vision of the BSNL has to be based on overall mission and vision of the organization. The mission of BSNL is
i.
To provide world class State-of-art technology telecom services on demand at affordable price. To provide world class telecom infrastructure to develop country's economy.
ii.
And the vision of BS L is i. To become the largest telecom Service Provider in Southeast Asia.
In dynamic environment anything permanent is "CHANGE". So we must revise and review so that focus is never lost.
Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.
2. Marketing Objective. The ultimate objective of any marketing activity is to satisfy the customers and today even a step ahead i.e. 'delighting' the customers, for which customers are offered something beyond their expectations from the service or the product. The objective being to acquire and retain the customers, who should continually feel that they are getting more value of the money, they are departing with. Marketing is the establishment, development, maintenance and optimization of long-term mutually valuable relationships between consumers and organisation. Successful Marketing focuses on understanding the needs and desires of the customers and is achieved by placing these needs at the heart of business by integrating them with the organisation strategy, people, technology and business processes. At its most basic, Marketing involves customers, organisations and relationships and the combination creates the need for the management. Marketing is about creating a competitive advantage by being the best at understanding, communicating, and delivering and developing existing customer relationships in addition to creating and keeping new customers. The concept of the product life cycle is giving way to customer life cycle, focusing on developing products that anticipate the future needs of existing customers and creating services that extend the existing customer relationship beyond the mere transaction. The customer life cycle will focus on lengthening the life span of the customer with the organisation rather than the endurance of a particular product. Customers have changing needs as their life styles alter- the development and provision of products and/or services that continuously seek to satisfy those needs is good Marketing. The Marketing will focus greater attention on how to deliver customer satisfaction and organisation will begin to structure itself around customer segments and not product lines. A good Marketing Strategy will take the business vision and apply it to the customer base. Kenneth Hildebrand.
Once marketing is understood, we can define marketing management process as analyzing marketing opportunities, researching and selecting target markets, designing marketing strategies, planning marketing programs, and organizing, implementing, and controlling the marketing efforts. In simple words it implies a buyer, a seller, bonded by the mutual need, satisfying offer and a medium/process to exchange the offer. 3. Marketing Process. We often talk of marketing & Sales and often use it interchangeably without understanding the difference in it. Marketing is everything we do to get and leverage a client relationship. Marketing process is broad and includes all of the following: Discovering what product, service or idea customers want. Producing a product with the appropriate features and quality. Pricing the product correctly. Promoting the product; spreading the word about why customers should buy it. Selling and delivering the product into the hands of the customer. Selling is one activity of the entire marketing process. Selling is the act of persuading or influencing a customer to buy (actually exchange something of value for) a product or service.
4. Contrasting the Sales Concept with the Marketing Concept:We Sell Confidence. The concepts surrounding both selling and marketing also differ. There is a need for both selling and marketing approaches in different situations. One approach is not always right and the other always wrong - it depends upon the particular situation. In a marketing approach, more listening to and eventual accommodation of the target market occurs. Two-way communication (sometimes between a salesperson and a customer) is emphasized in marketing so learning can take place and product offerings can be improved. A salesperson using the sales concept, on the other hand, sometimes has the ability to individualize components of a sale, but the emphasis is ordinarily upon helping the customer determine if they want the product, or a variation on it, that is already being offered by the company. In the sales approach, not much time is spent learning what the customer's ideal product would be because the salesperson has little say in seeing that their company's product is modified. Furthermore, they aren't rewarded for spending time listening to the customer's desires unless they have a product to match their desires that will result in a sale.
5. Mission & Vision.
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach. Most of the big companies have a Vision & Mission statement so as to guide their all energy, efforts to realize it. BSNL also has a vision 'To become the largest Telecom Service provider in South East Asia'. Firstly we need to understand the parameter for being the largest. Is it revenue, ARPU, profit, subscribers, Network (no of exchanges, BTS etc)? From monopoly to multi operator scenario, BSNL's market share is bound to reduce. But how much down we will let it? There are lot of similarities between British Telecom & us. One must keep watch on market share in monthly growth and take timely action. To improve our share, we need to acquire more than 50% of new acquisitions while maintaining earlier. This is quite challenging in this dynamic environment. Today landline base is reducing across globe, but why? Europe defines an operator with 25% or more market share as Significant market Power (SMP), while they intend to increase it to 40%. BSNL has been the largest operator and we must strive not only to maintain but enhance it. We need to act fast. Timely action is an essence. 6. Brand Equity. We may think what is Brand equity? In simple words it is how far people are willing to pay if we increase our prices i.e. premium for our services. We may feel happy to say there is lot of black marketing of our SIM cards. Is it a healthy sign? We reduce prices when competitors launch new schemes. Does it imply poor brand equity? Brand Equity can be built with good equity of quality of services at the affordable price. Continuous innovation in product and delivery of services with the appropriate pricing is the key strategy for developing the trust in customer so that he keeps his loyalty with BSNL. We have to be first mover in our efforts for product and price differentiation. Presently the market is in growth phase and price could be a differentiating factor, but how long? Is any scope left for further cuts? Ultimately it is the quality, customer care, and timely availability apart from price, which will matter. Quality depends on many parameters such as tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Competence, Courtesy, Credibility, Security, Access, and Communications with customer, Understanding etc. Quality definitely commands premium. Why are people willing to pay more for Raymonds or Adidas or Sony when comparable offers exist in market? One may say that customer perception of quality is not built overnight; it may require a brand and brand building investments apart from a quality product. How many brands do we have? Our investments get diluted with more number of brands. Even Airtel merged the Touchtel brand with more popular one. Can't we have just one brand i.e. BSNL? Have we ever tried to examine our revenue breakup? While majority of the revenue comes from landline (DELs plus PCOs), how many people know of Bfone? CellOne happens to be more popular.
7. Social Responsibility. We were the most trusted telecom brand in year 2003 & 2004. We have been given Golden Peacock award for Best Corporate Social responsibility. How can we leverage these distinctions? These achievements need to be highlighted through public relation exercise like press meet. This will help us in building our marketing image. In sales and distribution front though we have over one-lakh retailers, 1000 franchisees, 3300 CSCs, 36000 exchanges why are we not visible like others? Why can't we utilize all possible space? Can't we leverage our franchisee and STD-PCO strengths? Can we make these outlets as our core strength? Why our recharge coupons, India Telephone Cards are in shortage when there is no capacity constraint? Does it imply that our planning for printing, inventory management, logistics, and supply chain and of course franchisee management is inefficient? Do we have targets for these just like DELs & CellOne? Why can't we leverage this huge network for better customer care and improve collection efficiency? We must realize that with waiver of security deposits, no OYT schemes, no advance rentals, adjustment of landline security for CellOne, we don't get fixed deposits to meet our funds requirements. Everything has to be met from Operating revenues. We need to improve collections, realize bills early, not on the last day of payment and reduce bad debts. We need to provide 24X7 culture in our organization, though we have been providing operation and maintenance on 24X7 basis in the past and we will continue to provide in future too, but what about provisioning customer care and marketing on 24X7 basis? 8. Business Development. Business development units have been given the task to develop and nurture longterm relations with corporate houses. Many MoUs have been signed. Bulk bills are being issued. One-point payments are being realized for multiple service locations. Key Account Manager concept has been introduced. All this requires change of mindset in addition to the skills of marketing & sales. Do we have skilled manpower? Is our organization setup apt for better results? The staff expense to revenue ratio could be a good indicator. No doubt our revenues are up. Profit has increased. But consider the marketing budget we have in comparison to others. Even with this little budget many circles are unable to utilize it. We need to probe ourselves. Corporate office has permitted delegation of upto 70% of Circle budget to SSAs. Does it mean that our budget planning is wrong? How should we allocate marketing budget and which parameter to weigh?
•Per DEL/Mobile •Acquisition cost •Life time value •Competitor spend •Growth targets
9. Life Time Value
You can't give people pride, but you can provide the kind of understanding that makes people look to their inner strength and find their own sense of pride.
Charleszetta Waddles. Let us understand what is the lifetime value of our customers? Paying commission of Rs 100-200 to franchisee is not a cost considering the future flow of revenue from the customer. How many of our decisions are based on scientific analysis of the precious customer data we already have such as calling pattern, payment habits, usage profile etc? How many surveys we do, how much customer research we carry out? Net growth in mobile is high but what about churn? Can't we analyze & reduce it? Acquisition cost is usually said to be 5-8 times the retention cost. It is high time we learn fast, groom ourselves, improve our mindset and act fast. Business perspective is equally important as excellence in Telecom operations, maintenance, and installations & planning. Our core competence should be telecom business acumen and not just traditional expertise developed over the years. It is usually much easier to sell additional things to existing customers than to add new customer. Let us try to upgrade each customer by RS 20 - RS 50 by offering them more add on relevant services.
BSNL on brand building mission to face rivals
Public sector BSNL, the country's largest integrated telecom services provider, is about to go on a brand-building binge across its entire services portfolio to hold on to customers in the face of intense competition from rivals like Bharti Airtel, R-ADAG, Hutch-Essar and Idea . BSNL has roped in some of the biggest agencies like Grey Worldwide, Euro RSCG and Media Direction (the media arm of RK Swamy BBDO) to vitalise its mobile, landline, WLL and broadband services brands in all telecom circles, except Mumbai and Delhi where MTNL is the service provider . Confirming this, D.N. Sahay, joint deputy director general (marketing) at BSNL told ET: "We have empanelled three agencies for our different service categories. Grey Worldwide for CellOne mobile services, Euro RSCG for landline/broadband, while Media Direction will handle media duties." When contacted, a Sanchar Bhawan source said: "BSNL's objective is to build brand loyalty among its subscribers by establishing direct connectivity across landline, mobile, WLL and broadband segments. One of the biggest challenges will be coming up with communication solutions to tackle issues like 'customer churn' with its near 50 million customers, besides building deeper levels of trust."
BSNL's mega brands mandate is seen as a precursor to the much-awaited synergy between BSNL and MTNL. DoT officials recently indicated that efforts were on to evolve a unified marketing strategy for the two telecom PSUs ahead of their integration. The size of the media account at Rs 100 crore makes its one of the largest corporate accounts farmed out this year. Something that reflects BSNL's ambitious bid to talk to customers directly. The move is a significant departure from BSNL's largely passive communication strategy . It now wishes to engage its four crore plus telecom subscribers in more meaningful dialogue. BSNL officials, however, declined to detail specific commercials of the national brand building mandate. "For BSNL, it signals a decisive change in national communications strategy. Unlike conventional media plans, this is not about reach alone. It is about creating appropriate media programmes in response to specifc business issues. As a media house, we are taking strategic initiatives to approach client issues through customised media solutions.
CUSTOMER CO VE IE CE IS THE PRIORITY: BS L
Q.1) On the occasion of World Telecom Day, what are the new themes and initiatives that you would like to communicate to telecom users across the country? This year the ITU has adopted the theme 'Connecting persons with disabilities ICT opportunities for all' to address the special requirement of persons with disabilities. BSNL has launched a special scheme for the handicapped persons in PCOs. There is no security deposit and no minimum guarantee revenue for the PCO taken by handicapped persons. Q.2) The telecom revolution in India has been largely possible due to the presence of institutions like BS L. What has been your observation about the role played by BS L Maharashtra Circle towards this? BSNL Maharashtra Circle has played a key role in the development of Telecom Revolution in the state. With BSNL presence in the remote areas and villages, organizations like SBI and LIC have built-up the network on BSNL Leased lines. Telecom infrastructure is being provided by BSNL to state projects like SWAN, MSEB. Q.3) What were the various challenges faced and what was BS L Maharashtra Circle's strategy for overcoming them? The telecom Market is highly competitive market and for there have been many challenges faced by BSNL. Problems with respect to permissions from statutory bodies like municipal corporation/ Panchayat / Electricity Boards, etc. for tower installation/ laying cables/Electric connections are being faced. Despite all the odds, BSNL Maharashtra Circle is moving ahead and focusing on giving the best customer care so as to retain the existing customer base and acquire new customers. Q.4) What were the various goals set at each stage and how were they achieved? This year, one of BSNL's goals is Customer Delight where the focus is on Customer Care and to give timely after Sales Service as well as ensure availability of the product at the nearest point to the customer. In a nutshell, the customer convenience is the priority. We have declared this year as Customer Care Year and so the efforts are being made to give quality customer service and to deliver the services at the doorsteps of the customers. To serve the customer 24 hours, we have started a 24x7 Customer Care Call Centre in landline for the entire Maharashtra Circle at Pune.
Q.5) Which are the recent steps taken by BS L Maharashtra Circle to meet the competition among telecom service providers? BSNL is ready to take on the competition. Competition brings out the best in us and we have geared up for this. Various schemes have been launched in different product categories to provide affordable and quality service to the customer. At present the area of concern is declining landline base and PCO base. To combat these BSNL is providing Broadband and landline combo offer. In PCO tariff has been rationalized and commissions have been made attractive. In addition the GSM PCO bundling schemes has also been launched to capture the PCO market. The services like intelligent network services comprising of toll free numbers, universal access numbers, Voice VPN are useful for the organizations. To cater to the need of organizations having more number of staff, we are offering customized service and ensure the best service on affordable rate to them. With closed user group facility, the employees of an organization can talk freely with each other. Q.6) What will be the new era of telecom that we can expect by the year 2010? How will BS L Maharashtra Circle facilitate this? The coming era of telecom will be of Value Added Services. With the increasing tele-density, the market for Value Added Services will increase. Many things right from booking of the tickets, trading in the share market, entertainment, will be available on the mobile in local languages. At present we are giving the current news, travelling information, entertainment, jokes, ring tones, stock prices and much more on the BSNL mobile. Do you see the scope for promoting the usage of telecom services more aggressively in the state? Yes, there is a huge scope for promoting the use of telecom services in the state. Initially the mobile was used by only affluent people, now it has become part and parcel of everyone's life. With the hidden potential in the rural market and increasing number of telephones, telephone usage will definitely increase. In addition with the segmentspecific plans, we will be able to add more subscribers and usages. Q.7) What are the services that have played a key role in the growth of telecom so far and what are the services that will drive growth in the future? Presently the growth is in the mobile service followed by the broadband. In the near future the growth may be seen in the Value Added Services and in the rural market. As every customer wants service at the doorstep and to give the service of any kind telecom plays an important role to make it happen. Despite all the constraints and tariff reductions, BSNL Maharashtra Circle has been able to achieve the highest turnover amongst BSNL Circles in the country during 2007-08.
Q.8) Please mention some of the memorable milestones achieved by BS L Maharashtra Circle so far? With innovative schemes and proper co-ordination among various wings, BSNL Maharashtra Circle has given a record of 4.2 lakh connections in the month of March 2008. 1.25 lakh connections were given in a single day on 31st of March 2008! Q.9) Landmark achievements of Maharashtra Telecom Circle during 2007-08: Maharashtra Circle added 1.22 lakh net GSM connections in one day on 31st March 2008. Also, through a balanced combination of innovative promotional schemes, marketing efforts and collective team work of various units in SSAs, channel partners, and Mobile unit of Maharashtra Circle 3.52 lakh net mobile connections were added during March 2008, making the total no. of GSM connection in the Circle 32 lakh. Prepaid revenue of MH Circle for March '08 rose to Rs.115.54 cr. In a short duration of 4 days through promotional scheme of Recharge Coupons, around Rs. 60 cr revenue has been earned. BSNL Maharashtra Telecom Circle has doubled its Broadband customer base in the current financial year from 90,000 to 1,80,000 customers. The year 2007 had been declared as the Year of Broadband and these figures speak for themselves. Q.10) What are your future plans for BS L Maharashtra Circle? This year, BSNL Maharashtra Circle plans to add another 35 lakh mobile capacity, 2 lakh WLL capacity and 4 lakh broadband capacities. In addition to the Broadband expansion, a pilot project the Wi Max service is also being rolled out in BSNL Maharashtra Circle. Q.11) What's new?. Bundling of GSM PCO: GSM (Mobile) PCO is very convenient for the end users as well as franchisee. There is no registration, no security deposit.Cost of the SIM card is Rs. 200 with a free talktime of Rs. 50. On the initial recharge of any amount, a bonus talktime of Rs. 500 is offered. For subsequent 11 months, a bonus free talktime of Rs.100 per month is offered if the value of recharge is more than Rs. 500. Under the bundling scheme with a meagre investment of Rs. 3000, wherein he already has earned a free talk-time of Rs.550, any person can start a BSNL GSM PCO. BSNL has tied up with M/s Accord and M/s Visiontek for supply of compatible machines. This being a mobile PCO, has its own advantage of mobility from place to place. For the end user, the tariff is very convenient; Re 1 per minute within Maharashtra & Goa and Rs.2 per minute for outside Maharashtra & Goa within the country. Auction of Vanity Mobile Numbers: Auction of Vanity Numbers has started from March 2008 and the details of vanity numbers, reserved price and bidding procedure is available on http://www.maharashtra.bsnl.co.in
BSNL mobile's CellOne menu: The CellOne menu available on BSNL Mobile provides easy access to News, Entertainment, Finance, TV schedules, Travel, Downloading logos, pictures, ringtones, Astrology, Cricket and many such services. IPTV: BSNL Maharashtra Circle has launched IPTV in Pune. The multiplay services offered therein include TV, Broadband, ?.. Free Insurance: All BSNL's postpaid customers (Landline, Mobile and WLL) are automatically covered with free personal accident insurance coverage of Rs. 50,000. No paper work, no premium to pay. BSNL has tied up with Bajaj Allianz. Bundling of handset: BSNL has signed agreement with LG, BenQ, Digibeeand Beetel for bundling of handset and SIM. The bundled products are available in the range of Rs. 1100 to Rs2000 (Approx.). Q.12) What's popular?. VAS on Mobile & Landline: Value added services such as music, ringtones, News, astrology, cricket, Railway PNR enquiry and many more interesting services are available on BSNL mobile as well as landline. BSNL has signed agreements with various content providers for providing these interesting and informative contents at just Rs. 5 per minute from mobile and Rs.1.20 for 30 seconds from landline. These services are very popular and are widely used. Unlimited GPRS: BSNL offers unlimited GPRS at just Rs. 199 per month. By connecting the mobile to computer via Bluetooth or data cable the mobile customers of BSNL can enjoy unlimited download on their laptops while on move. Q.13) High-Tech services for Corporate Sector: Leased Lines: There are 9125 leased lines working in BSNL Maharashtra Circle as on date. Long list of the customers includes State Bank of India, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, and so on. SBI is one of the biggest customer having 13,500 leased lines across the country. Managed Leased Line Network (MLLN) is also provided in most of the parts of the Circle. MLLN enables BSNL to provide time dependent bandwidth as per the customer's requirement. MPLS VPN: The most secured, economical and fast mode of data transfer is MPLS VPN. Preferred by companies like ICICI Bank, Indusind Bank, UTI Mutual Fund, New India Assurance, Cipla, etc. Country's financial hub, the Bombay Stock Exchange is one of the biggest customers of BSNL's MPLS VPN. Toll Free Number: The perfect service for the service industry like hotels, airlines, insurance companies and so on. In fact its suitable for any business which wants to increase the customer base and wants more and more customers to call in for information. In this age where customer care is the key to success, Toll Free Number for the customers to call in is absolutely essential. Some of BSNL's satisfied customers are
Kingfisher, Reliance Industries Ltd., Barclays, Mahindra & Mahindra Finance Service. Televoting: In an era where opinion/ vote of every individual counts in everything possible, BSNL's Televoting is hugely popular and widely used. Some of the shining examples of success are Zee TV's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Sony TV's Indian Idol, and Star TV's Kaun Banega Crorepati. It is also useful for publications for carrying out opinion polls, running contests, etc. Centrex: It is a cost-effective and contemporary facility for large Corporate and Small Business Houses. It is a central office based communication service which integrates all the multi located Telephone lines of a customer (Existing and New) into a single highly functional communication group with more distinctive features without any additional equipment (like EPABX) at your premises. It offers features like intercom dialing, distinctive ringing, directed call wait, Direct Inward Dialling (DID), Direct Outward Dialling, Location Dialling, Unlimited growth etc. It can be called a ' Virtual EPABx.' Q.14) Customer convenience products: India Telephone Cards (ITC): The India Telephone Cards are the prepaid cards for making local, STD and ISD calls from telephone not having the respective facility. The telephone from which the calls are made is not billed at all. The cards are available in the denominations of Rs. 100, Rs. 200, Rs. 500, Rs. 1000, Rs. 2000 and Rs. 5000. Validity of the cards varies with denominations. Call Now Cards: These cards are similar to India Telephone Cards but are more suitable for making ISD calls. Calls to US using a Call Now card of Rs. 5000 are as low as Rs. 1.75 per minute. Validity increases and call charges decrease as the denomination of the card increases. Fixed Line Prepaid PCO: As the name suggests it's a prepaid PCO. The FLPP cards are available in the denominations from Rs 500 to Rs 10,000 with a commission up to 38%.
doc_143232250.docx
BSNL is India's oldest and largest communication service provider (CSP). It had a customer base of 95 million as of June 2011.[6] It has footprints throughout India except for the metropolitan cities of Mumbai and New Delhi, which are managed by Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL).
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (known as BSNL, India Communications Corporation Limited) is a public sector communications company in India. It is the India's largest telecommunication company with 24% market share as on March 31, 2008. Its headquarters are at Bharat Sanchar Bhawan, Harish Chandra Mathur Lane, Janpath, New Delhi. It has the status of Mini-ratna - a status assigned to reputed Public Sector companies in India. BSNL is India's oldest and largest Communication Service Provider (CSP). Currently BSNL has a customer base of 72.34 million (Basic &Mobile telephony). It has footprints throughout India except for the metropolitan cities of Mumbai and New Delhi which are managed by MTNL.
BSNL As on March 31, 2008 BSNL commanded a customer base of 31.55 million Wireline, 4.58 million CDMA-WLL and 36.21 million GSM Mobile subscribers. BSNL's earnings for the Financial Year ending March 31, 2007 stood at INR 397.15b (US$ 9.67 b) with net profit of INR 78.06b (US$ 1.90 billion). Today, BSNL is India's largest Telco and one of the largest Public Sector Undertaking with estimated market value of $ 100 Billion. The company is planning an IPO with in 6 months to offload 10% to public.
Type Availability Founded Revenue Owner Key people
Communication Service Provider Countrywide Mumbai except Delhi &
19th century, incorporated 2000 US$ 9.67 billion (2007) The Government of India Kuldeep Goyal(CMD)
Website www.bsnl.in www.bsnl.co.in
Vision, Objectives:
BSNL's Vision is to become the largest Telecom Service Provider in Asia. Its Mission is to provide world class, state-of-art technology telecom services to its customers on demand at competitive prices and world class telecom infrastructure in its area of operation and contribute to the growth of India's economy. BSNL's Objectives are to be Lead Telecom Services Provider, provide quality and reliable fixed telecom service to our customer and increase customer's confidence, provide mobile telephone service of high quality and become the No. 1 GSM operator in its area of operation, provide point of interconnection to other service provider as per their requirement promptly and facilitate Research & Development activity in the country. BSNL also has the objective to contribute towards National Plan Target of 500 million subscriber base for India by 2010, Broadband customers base of 20 million in India by 2010 as per Broadband Policy 2004, Providing telephone connection in villages as per government policy and Implementation of Triple play as a regular commercial proposition.
Human Resources Development
With a corporate philosophy that considers Human Resource as the most prized assets of the organization, it's natural for BSNL to continually hone employee skills, enhance their knowledge and their expertise and their aspirations to fruition. Even as BSNL goes about conducting its business activities, it lays emphasis on constant enhancement of knowledge and skills through regular training programmes. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has a vast reservoir of highly skilled and experienced work force of about 3,57,000 personnel. We believe that our staff, which is one of the best trained manpower in the telecom sector, is our biggest asset. We believe that our future depends on our staff who provide services to our valued customers and stay in touch with them. To meet the technological challenges, employees are trained for technology upgradation, modernization, computerization etc in BSNL's training Centers spread across Country. These centers are properly equipped with the requisite infrastructure facilities such as Lecture rooms, modern audio-visual aids, libraries, hostels etc.
Finance
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, the largest Public Sector Undertaking of the Nation, is certainly on a financial ground that's sound. The Company has a net worth of Rs. 88,128 crores (US$ 22.02 billion), authorised equity capital of Rs. 10,000 crores (US $ 2.50 billion), Paid up Equity Share Capital of Rs. 5,000 crores (US $ 1.25 billion) and Revenues is Rs. 38053 crores (US $ 9.51 billion) in 2007-08. (Note: 1 US $ = 40.02 INR as on 31-03-2008) Revenue Revenue earned by BSNL during last five years
Gross Investment in Fixed Assets
The BSNL is making substancial investment year to year for its network expension and mordenisation. During the current financial year BSNL has made the gross investment of Rs. 7180 crore ( US $ 1.79 billion) in Fixed Assets. These investments have been financed by the internal accruals.
Cumulative Capital Outlay
BSNL has Gross Fixed Assets of over Rs. 124578 Crores (US $ 31.13 billion) as on 31.03 .2008.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has got net fixed assets valuing more than Rs. 54698 Crores (US $ 13.67 billion), which are in the form of Land, Buildings Cables, Apparatus & Plants etc. as on 31.03.2008.
Growth Plan
BSNL's future plan include a fast expansion programme of increasing the present 34 million lines to twice that number by 2005 and some 120 million lines by 2010. The shift in demand from voice to data domination, and from wireline to wireless, has revolutionized the very nature of the network. BSNL has already set in place several measures that should enable it to evolve into a fully integrated multi- operator by 2005 and its incumbent status, size, infrastructure and human resource should certainly, give it a distinct advantage. 1) Consolidation of the network and maintaining high quality of service comparable to International standards is the key aim of the Growth Plan. Objective of the plan are: 2) The telephone connection shall be provided on demand and it shall be sustained. 3) The Network shall be made fully digital. All the technologically obsolete analog exchanges will be replaced with digital exchanges. 4) Digital connectivity shall be made available to all the exchanges by 2007. 5) Extensive use of Optical fiber System in the local, Junction and long distance network so as to make available sufficient bandwidth for the spread of Internet and Information technology. 6) Introduction of latest telecom services like National directory enquiry, computerization etc.
Meeting the challenges
BSNL is committed to provide quality Telecom Services at affordable price to the citizens of the remotest part of the Country. BSNL is making all effort to ensure that the main objectives of the new Telecom Policy 1999 (salient points indicated below) are achieved: Access to telecommunications is of utmost importance for achievement of the country's social and economic goals. Availability of affordable and effective communications for the citizens is at the core of the vision and goal of the new Telecom policy 1999. Strive to provide a balance between the provision of universal service to all uncovered areas, including the rural areas, and the provision of high-level services capable of meeting the needs of the country's economy;
Encourage development of telecommunication facilities in remote, hilly and tribal areas of the country; Transform in a time bound manner, the telecommunications sector to a greater competitive environment in both urban and rural areas providing equal opportunities and level playing field for all players. During Financial Year 2006-2007 (From April 1, 2006 to March 31, 2007) BSNL has added 9.6 million new customers in various telephone services taking its customer base to 64.8 million. BSNL's nearest competitor Bharti Airtel is standing at a customer base of 39 million. However, despite impressive growth shown by BSNL in recent times, the Fixed line customer base of BSNL is declining. In order to woo back its fixed-line customers BSNL has brought down long distance calling rate under OneIndia plan, however, the success of the scheme is not known. However, BSNL faces bleak fiscal 2006-2007 as users flee, which has been accepted by the CMD BSNL. Presently there is an intense competition in Indian Telecom sector and various Telcos are rolling out attractive schemes and are providing good customer services. However, BSNL being legacy operator and its conversion from a Government Department, earns lot of criticism for its poor customer service. Although in recent past there have been tremendous improvement in working of BSNL, still it is below the Industry's expectations. A large ageing (average age 49 years(appx)) workforce (300,000 strong), which is mostly semi-literate or illiterate is the main reason for the poor customer service. Despite all the limitations of a legacy set-up, the management has been striving hard for the growth of the organisation - and has been able to give a tough and sustained fight to the competition - rather unheard in the Indian PSUs. Although in coming years the retirement profile of the workforce is very fast and around 25% of existing workforce will retire by 2010, still the workforce will be quite large by the industry standards. Quality of the workforce will also remain an issue. However, with the induction of Graduate Engineers in BSNL, the quality of its workforce is expected to enhance extensively. But BSNL has not been able to give Engineer like working atmosphere to its young recruits.
Main Services being provided by BS L
BSNL provides almost every telecom service, however following are the main Telecom Services being provided by BSNL in India:1. Universal Telecom Sevices : Fixed wireline services & Wireless in Local loop (WLL) using CDMA Technology called bfone and Tarang respectively. BSNL is dominant operator in fixed line. As on December 31, 2007, BSNL had 81% marketshare of fixed lines.
BS L Mobile
Pre-paid Mobile 2. Cellular Mobile Telephone Services: BSNL is major provider of Cellular Mobile Telephone services using GSM platform under brandname CellOne. Pre-paid Cellular services of BSNL are know as Excel. As on March 31, 2007 BSNL had 17% share of mobile telephony in the country.
BS L Broadband 3. Internet: BSNL is providing internet as dial-up connection (Sancharnet) as Prepaid, (Netone) as Postpaid and ADSL-Broadband Dataone. BSNL has around 50% marketshare in broadband in India. BSNL has planned aggressive rollout in broadband for current financial year. 4. Intelligent Network (IN): BSNL is providing IN services like tele-voting, toll free calling, premium calling etc BS L land line. : BSNL is the largest telecom operator in India and is known to everybody for Basic Telephony Services for over 100 years. Presently the Plain old, Countrywide telephone service is being provided through 32,000 electronic exchanges, 326 Digital Trunk Automatic Exchanges(TAX), Digitalized Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) all interlinked by over 2.4 lakh km of Optical Fiber Cable, with a host of Phone Plus value additions to our valued Customers.
Telephone Basic Telephone (Bfone) Total umber of connections WLL (Tarang) Total umber of connections Village Public Telephones Total umber of Telephones Public Telephones (Local, STD and Highway) Total umber of Public Telephones a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 5,22,120 a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 46,96,641 a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 3 ,0 1 ,2 2 ,2 6 9
a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8
19,31,182
STD Stations umber of STD Stations a s o n 3 0 .0 9 .0 8 33,206
Cellular Service Overview
India's fastest growing cellular service , along with postpaid and prepaid services brings cellular telephony to the masses, through innovative technology and strategic pricing. This ambitious service uses state-of-theart GSM technology to attain global excellence and leadership in business. Our entry into this sector has brought GSM cellular service at an affordable cost to the common man. All serving a single objective, to provide better communication to millions across India. Customers have reposed tremendous faith in BSNL and it has enrolled over 30 Lakh Cellular customers within ten months of launch of Cellular service, an unprecedented mark in Indian Cellular Market.
Mobile Services (As on 30.09.2008)
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Total number of connections District Headquarters covered Total number of villages covered ational Highway covered (Km) State Highway covered (Km) Railway route covered (Km)
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3 ,9 1 ,6 6 ,9 4 3 617 2,74,428 53,230 69,770 39,173
BSNL is India's no. 1 Internet service provider with more than 17 lakh subscribers, providing Internet service throughout the entire country (except in New Delhi and Mumbai) under the brand name of "Sancharnet". Sancharnet provides free all India roaming and enables it's users to access their accounts, using the same access code (172233) and user ID from any where in the Country. In order to make Internet available through out the length and breadth of the Country Internet Dhabas are being commissioned at all the Block Headquarters. BSNL has also started DIAS and Account free internet access (CLI based) facility onfew select cities recently. BSNL has launched "SANCHARNET CARD" recently. The Sancharnet Card" is a prepaid Internet Access Card with following features for customers: Self-register for internet access with your choice of userid Renew your existing Sancharnet Account Wide Range of Internet Access Packages Web-Hosting Service is also provided by the BSNL. It allows customers to host their static or dynamic web-sites on BSNL servers. Web hosting service provides basic features like Web-space (Data Storage) on servers for hosting HTML pages with browser supported MIME types, Primary or Secondary Domain Name Hosting, Server Side Scripting: Perl, Java Servlets, JSP, Database Access( MySQL), Email Access and Web-email, Multiple Email IDs as per the plan, Ftp access for uploading and downloading pages as per the plan, Continuous usage billing for Web, Messaging and FTP etc.
Web Co-location Service: BSNL provides Internet services to the customers located in about 450 locations. Web Co-location is an easy and cost effective solution to house a company's powerful infrastructure without losing the administrative control on the equipments. Web Co-location eliminates much of the Infrastructure costs as well as the maintenance cost of such equipments apart from avoiding the last mile problems. Web Co-location enables customer s equipment/ Servers to be treated as a part and parcel of the ISP network enjoying all the facilities as the ISP servers.
SMS and BULK SMS Services It allows you to send SMS using Sancharnet Email service. Sending SMS using Sancharnet account is very easy and cost effective. There is no need of a mobile phone to send SMS. Moreover it is easy to type a message on computer keyboard.
BSNL is in the process of commissioning of a world class, multi-gigabit, multiprotocol, convergent IP infrastructure through National Internet Backbone-II (NIB-II), that will provide convergent services through the same backbone and broadband access network. The Broadband service will be available on DSL technology (on the same copper cable that is used for connecting telephone), on a countrywide basis spanning 198 cities. In terms of infrastructure for broadband services NIB-II would put India at par with more advanced nations. The services that would be supported includes always-on broadband access to the Internet for residential and business customers, Content based services, Video multicasting, Video-on-demand and Interactive gaming, Audio and Video conferencing, IP Telephony, Distance learning, Messaging: plain and feature rich, Multisite MPLS VPNs with Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. The subscribe will be able to access the above services through Subscriber Service Selection System (SSSS) portal. Key Objectives To provide high speed Internet connectivity (upto 8 Mbps) To provide Virtual Private Network (VPN) service to the broadband customers To provide dial VPN service to MPLS VPN customers. To provide multicast video services, video-on-demand, etc. through the Broadband Remote Access Server (BRAS).
BS L Managed etwork Services
BSNL Managed Network Services is a fully managed Secured Data services, providing a truly one-stop and a complete experience that significantly reduces risks and complexities involved in implementing and maintaining a robust IP network. It brings together all of a business' communications needs in an integrated offering. With the promise of an integrated platform with one-stop convenience and fully managed experience, BSNL Managed
To ensure one stop solution for all connectivity needs, better manageability and accountability, BSNL offers Managed Network Services which includes Enterprise Broadband, Internet and MPLS VPN connectivity as completely managed offering. With an integrated service option, you would enjoy benefit of an SLA backed network services with convenience of being supported by single helpdesk number for your network connectivity, hardware related issues. Other benefits include: End-to-end Turn key Implementation (including CPE) Proactive management through state of the art NoC Periodic reporting facilitating trend analysis Capability to provide VPN connectivity from any part of the country. Managed Firewall as well as IP Sec
Leased Line
To transmit data between computer and electronic information devices, BSNL provides data communication services to its subscribers. It offers a choice of high, medium and low speed leased data circuits as well as dial-up lines. Bandwidth is available on demand in most of the cities. Managed leased Line Network (MLLN) offers flexibility of providing circuits with speeds of n x 64 Kbps up to 2 Mbps. Useful for internet leased lines and international principle Leased Lines (IPLCs) For dedicated point to point speech, private wire, tele-printer and data circuits are given on lease basis. Leased circuits are provided to subscribers for internal communication between their offices/factories at various sites within a city/town or different cities/town on point to point basis, or on a network basis interconnecting the various sites. Managed Leased Line Service(MLLN): The MLLN is a Managed Leased Line Network system which is proposed to provide Leased line connectivity. The State-ofthe-art technology equipment MLLN is designed mainly for having effective control, monitor on the leased line so that the down time is very much minimised.
Audio Conferencing
Audio Conferencing service allows multiple participants to converse with each other regardless of their location through the normal fixed line telephone or cellular phone. An audio conference subscriber can add two or more participants in a particular conference. The customers can schedule their audio conferences through the Web or through IVR. The service is available to existing BSNL subscribers only. Any conference scheduled can have both Dial-in and Dial-out participants. Conference can be scheduled one time or standing. A standing conference is always on. The authorized participants has just to dial in a particular telephone number followed by a password to enter into a conference. On demand conference can be made. The chairperson can invite several users one by one in the conference without using the web. He/she has to just dial a number followed by certain number and the called party number for doing a conference call.
Video Conferencing
Video Conferencing service allows multiple participants to converse with each other regardless of their location through the video end-points or Personal computers. It involves Video and Audio communication. It's about connecting people. A video conference subscriber can add two or more video participants in a particular conference. The customers can schedule their video conferences through the Web. The video conferencing service can be availed by any user through IP or ISDN interface. The service is available to existing BSNL subscribers only.
The Video end-point required for conferencing should be ITU - H.323/H.320 compliant. Any conference scheduled can have both Dial-in and Dial-out participants on either IP or ISDN. The customer will have to procure the video end-point from the market. Personal computer user can download the software called "PVX" from BSNL's Video Conferencing Portal to avail the Video Conferencing facility with their web-cam. This software will be made available shortly at BSNL's Video Conferencing Portal.
BS L Web Conferencing
BSNL Web Conferencing Service is made available on your desktop and enables you to conduct virtual meetings with your partners, suppliers, employers etc. It has the innovative feature such as Persistent meeting rooms, which simulates physical room environment wherein authorized users can enter their designated rooms the way do in physical meetings. The users can access the rich features, apart from multi-point, multimedia (Audio, Video & Data) conferencing service, BSNL web Conferencing service provides very powerful data conferencing tools to enhance collaboration among users such as sharing of PowerPoint Presentation, Whiteboard, Documents, & Chat facility amongst the conference participants, which will significantly aid in increasing the effectiveness of your business meetings.
Inet
Change your way of doing business by networking your computers, data terminals, hosts and LANs in different offices and manufacturing units both within the country and outside, through Inet - an X.25 based packet switched Public Data Network of BSNL . It provides extremely cost effective and reliable solution to your High Speed Wide Area Networking needs. Inet can be used in the following applications : Electronic Mail Services Corporate Communications Information Retrieval Database Services Remote Job Applications Credit Card Verifications INTERNET connectivity
TELEGRAPH
Telegram is a common man's communication need. The first telegraph message was transmitted live on Morse through electrical signals between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour on 5th November 1850.The Telegraph services were opened to public during February 1855. To implement modern technology in the telegraph network a National Message Switching Network Plan was prepared in 1986. The growth of Telegraph services has been affected owing to the impact of other non-voice services and improvement in density of telephones, nevertheless the service has social relevance and historical importance. etwork All the cities(300) and towns (4689) as per 1991 census and a large number of villages have access to Public Telegraph Services through Telegraph Offices. Services Telegraph services are being provided through Telegraph offices, Telecom Centers and Bureau FAX centers. A number of new types of telegraph services such as Store & forward message switching system, electronic key-board concentrator , electronic teleprinters and formatted terminals have been introduced. Express Money Transfer Service. It aims at delivering money within few hours after rendering at the counter of a telegraph office was introduced in A.P. Telecom Circle on experimental basis. This service is being made available at many of the stations in Tamilnadu, Kerala, Karnataka , Maharashtra and metro cities of Delhi & Calcutta. Apart from the facility of booking of telegrams, following services are also offered in some Telegraph Offices: FAX Service is available at many selected telegraph offices for national and international outgoing and incoming messages A new class of telegram "Fax Telegrams" is available for public. Booking of telegrams on phone. Delivery of telegram over Phone if the same is specified in the address of the telegram. Delivery of telegrams through Fax, if the telegrams contain fax numbers in the address.
BS L Present & Future.
Since its corporatisation in October 2000, BSNL has been actively providing connections in both Urban and Rural areas and the efficiency of the company has drastically improved from the days when one had to wait for years to get a phone connection to now when one can get a connection in even hours. Pre-activated Mobile connections are available at many places across India. BSNL has also unveiled very costeffective Broadband internet access plans (DataOne) targeted at homes and small businesses. At present BSNL enjoy's around 45% of market share of ISP services. Year of Broadband 2007 : 2007 has been declared as "Year of Broadband" in India and BSNL is in the process of providing 5 million Broadband connectivity by the end of 2007. BSNL has upgraded existing Dataone (Broadband) connections for a speed of up to 2 Mbit/s without any extra cost. This 2 Mbit/s broadband service is being provided by BSNL at a cost of just US$ 11.7 per month(as of 21/07/2008 and at a limit of 2.5GB monthly limit with 0200-0800 hrs as no charge period). Further, BSNL is rolling out new Broadband services as Triple play (telecommunications). : BSNL is planning to increase its customer base to 108 million customers by 2010. With the frantic activity in the communication sector in India, the target appears achievable, however due to intense competition in Indian Telecom sector in recent past BSNL's growth has slowed down. BSNL is pioneer of Rural Telephony in India. BSNL has recently bagged 80% of US$ 580 m (INR 2,500 crores) Rural Telephony project of Government of India.
BS L gears up for competition
The entry of the private sector has not unnerved BSNL. If anything, it has only strengthened its resolve to stay at the top. The recent corporatisation has helped BSNL in not only mobilising funds but also in speeding up the decision making process and implementing strategies for combating competition. The corporation's subscriber base, which has gone up six-fold during the last decade, is currently working towards building up an image of being a friendly-service provider. With this aim it has recently initiated specialised training programmes to bring about an attitudinal change in the staff towards dealing with customers and make the organisation more flexible and customer oriented. BSNL, which recently slashed the rates of long-distance telephone call rates by more than 60 per cent to preempt competition, realises that cutting charges is just one factor in retaining customers. Quality of service would be just as decisive if not more. "Apart from reducing costs, we are interested in providing better quality of service to meet competition with our trained manpower," says N. Chenchiah, General Manager, Marketing. "Competition from national long-distance players has just started." Of course, BSNL has the advantage of being an early starter and enjoyed the monopolistic benefits all these years.
BS L On Top?
You probably didn't need an investment banker to tell you this, but somebody's got to do the job: ICICI Securities (I-Sec)saddled with the onerous responsibility of "synergy consultant"-has tabled two options for the merger of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL). Either BSNL buys out MTNL or MTNL picks up 51 per cent of BSNL, if not all of it. That, of course, is the simpler part-making the recommendations. Getting somebody to make the decision is turning out to be the tougher part-a meeting scheduled last fortnight to thrash out the options was postponed, with the outgoing Department of Telecommunications (DOT) secretary Nripendra Mishra preferring to let his successor do the honours . On paper, it would appear logical for bsnl to buy into MTNL (the government owns all of BSNL and 56.25 per cent in MTNL, which is listed domestically as well as on the New York Stock Exchange). Whilst MTNL is confined to Delhi and Mumbai, BSNL already has a pan-Indian footprint, with a presence in 5,200 cities and 5.4 lakh villages. Naturally, BSNL would have more subscribers too: 46 million, as against mtnl's 4.84 million. As far as investments go too, BSNL is stepping on the gas, with a proposed capital expenditure of Rs 25,000 crore a year for the next three years-and this comes in the wake of the Rs 32,000 crore-plus spent over the past three years. The short point: BSNL can simply go ahead and acquire the government's stake in MTNL. Government sources point out that the intricacies and modalities of various options, valuations and swap ratios will come up only later. "Right now, opinion is being sought from key stakeholders (BSNL and MTNL)." R.S.P. Sinha, Chairman &Managing Director, MTNL, appears to have his problems with MTNL being acquired. "Is BSNL's acquisition of the government's stake in MTNL to be called a merger?" is his favourite question these days. "A merger should be the route-I am okay with a straight or reverse merger." You could argue that the hairsplitting about whether the marriage will be a merger or an acquisition is secondary (though MTNL's 53,000 employees and BSNL's 3.5 lakh workforce may disagree); after all, the purpose of the amalgamation is to create a bigger, more efficient giant that can dance. "The two PSUs have not performed well-in the last four years, their share of expansions has been only 20 per cent, with 80 per cent coming from private players, of a total of 50 million lines," points out Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister for Communications & it. "I want MTNL and BSNL to achieve a target of 50 per cent (80 million lines) in the next three years." That's great, but will somebody bring them together first?
BS L's landmark achievements
BSNL, India's largest telecom service provider, has broken all the past records by providing 10 lakh cellular connections in December 2005 alone, thereby adding an unprecedented number of customers to its cellular subscriber base. BSNL has achieved the landmark of providing more than 14 million mobile cellular connections all over the country. In South Zone, BSNL provided more than 4.77 lakh connections. Out of this, more than 2 lakh connections were provided in the state of Kerala, 1.25 lakh connections in the state of Tamil Nadu, and over 75 thousand connections each in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The waiting list for cellular connections in the South Zone has been cleared and now, connections are available 'On Demand'. In the North Zone also, 2.58 lakh connections were provided during December 2005. More than 1.2 lakh connections have been provided in the state of Uttar Pradesh and approximately one lakh connections in the state of Rajasthan. Now, connections are available 'On Demand' in North Zone also. BSNL has 65% of market share in the state of J&K. In the East Zone, BSNL provided 2.68 lakh connections during December 2005. Of these, over one lakh connections have been provided in the state of West Bengal and 62,000 in the state of Bihar. In the North Eastern states, BSNL has a market share of about 70%. 'On Demand' availability of mobile connections in East Zone is expected by the end of January.
MARKETI G STRAGIES
In today's very competitive marketplace a strategy that insures a consistent approach to offering your product or service in a way that will outsell the competition is critical. However, in concert with defining the marketing strategy you must also have a well defined methodology for the day to day process of implementing it. It is of little value to have a strategy if you lack either the resources or the expertise to implement it. In the process of creating a marketing strategy you must consider many factors. Of those many factors, some are more important than others. Because each strategy must address some unique considerations, it is not reasonable to identify 'every' important factor at a generic level. However, many are common to all marketing strategies. Some of the more critical are described below. You begin the creation of your strategy by deciding what the overall objective of your enterprise should be. In general this falls into one of four categories:
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If the market is very attractive and your enterprise is one of the strongest in the industry you will want to invest your best resources in support of your offering. If the market is very attractive but your enterprise is one of the weaker ones in the industry you must concentrate on strengthening the enterprise, using your offering as a stepping stone toward this objective. If the market is not especially attractive, but your enterprise is one of the strongest in the industry then an effective marketing and sales effort for your offering will be good for generating near term profits. If the market is not especially attractive and your enterprise is one of the weaker ones in the industry you should promote this offering only if it supports a more profitable part of your business (for instance, if this segment completes a product line range) or if it absorbs some of the overhead costs of a more profitable segment. Otherwise, you should determine the most cost effective way to divest your enterprise of this offering.
Having selected the direction most beneficial for the overall interests of the enterprise, the next step is to choose a strategy for the offering that will be most effective in the market. This means choosing one of the following 'generic' strategies (first described by Michael Porter in his work, Competitive Advantage).
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A COST LEADERSHIP STRATEGY is based on the concept that you can produce and market a good quality product or service at a lower cost than your competitors. These low costs should translate to profit margins that are higher than the industry average. Some of the conditions that should exist to support a cost leadership strategy include an on-going availability of operating capital, good process engineering skills, close management of labor, products designed for ease of manufacturing and low cost distribution.
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A DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGY is one of creating a product or service that is perceived as being unique "throughout the industry". The emphasis can be on brand image, proprietary technology, special features, superior service, a strong distributor network or other aspects that might be specific to your industry. This uniqueness should also translate to profit margins that are higher than the industry average. In addition, some of the conditions that should exist to support a differentiation strategy include strong marketing abilities, effective product engineering, creative personnel, the ability to perform basic research and a good reputation. A FOCUS STRATEGY may be the most sophisticated of the generic strategies, in that it is a more 'intense' form of either the cost leadership or differentiation strategy. It is designed to address a "focused" segment of the marketplace, product form or cost management process and is usually employed when it isn't appropriate to attempt an 'across the board' application of cost leadership or differentiation. It is based on the concept of serving a particular target in such an exceptional manner, that others cannot compete. Usually this means addressing a substantially smaller market segment than others in the industry, but because of minimal competition, profit margins can be very high.
Pricing Having defined the overall offering objective and selecting the generic strategy you must then decide on a variety of closely related operational strategies. One of these is how you will price the offering. A pricing strategy is mostly influenced by your requirement for net income and your objectives for long term market control. There are three basic strategies you can consider.
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A SKIMMING STRATEGY If your offering has enough differentiation to justify a high price and you desire quick cash and have minimal desires for significant market penetration and control, then you set your prices very high. A MARKET PENETRATION STRATEGY If near term income is not so critical and rapid market penetration for eventual market control is desired, then you set your prices very low. A COMPARABLE PRICING STRATEGY If you are not the market leader in your industry then the leaders will most likely have created a 'price expectation' in the minds of the marketplace. In this case you can price your offering comparably to those of your competitors.
Promotion To sell an offering you must effectively promote and advertise it. There are two basic promotion strategies, PUSH and PULL.
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The PUSH STRATEGY maximizes the use of all available channels of distribution to "push" the offering into the marketplace. This usually requires generous discounts to achieve the objective of giving the channels incentive to promote the offering, thus minimizing your need for advertising. The PULL STRATEGY requires direct interface with the end user of the offering. Use of channels of distribution is minimized during the first stages of
promotion and a major commitment to advertising is required. The objective is to "pull" the prospects into the various channel outlets creating a demand the channels cannot ignore. There are many strategies for advertising an offering. Some of these include:
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Product Comparison advertising In a market where your offering is one of several providing similar capabilities, if your offering stacks up well when comparing features then a product comparison ad can be beneficial. Product Benefits advertising When you want to promote your offering without comparison to competitors, the product benefits ad is the correct approach. This is especially beneficial when you have introduced a new approach to solving a user need and comparison to the old approaches is inappropriate. Product Family advertising If your offering is part of a group or family of offerings that can be of benefit to the customer as a set, then the product family ad can be of benefit. Corporate advertising When you have a variety of offerings and your audience is fairly broad, it is often beneficial to promote your enterprise identity rather than a specific offering.
Distribution You must also select the distribution method(s) you will use to get the offering into the hands of the customer. These include:
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On-premise Sales involves the sale of your offering using a field sales organization that visits the prospect's facilities to make the sale. Direct Sales involves the sale of your offering using a direct, in-house sales organization that does all selling through the Internet, telephone or mail order contact. Wholesale Sales involves the sale of your offering using intermediaries or "middle-men" to distribute your product or service to the retailers. Self-service Retail Sales involves the sale of your offering using self service retail methods of distribution. Full-service Retail Sales involves the sale of your offering through a full service retail distribution channel.
Of course, making a decision about pricing, promotion and distribution is heavily influenced by some key factors in the industry and marketplace. These factors should be analyzed initially to create the strategy and then regularly monitored for changes. If any of them change substantially the strategy should be reevaluated.
The Environment Environmental factors positively or negatively impact the industry and the market growth potential of your product/service. Factors to consider include:
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Government actions - Government actions (current or under consideration) can support or detract from your strategy. Consider subsidies, safety, efficacy and operational regulations, licensing requirements, materials access restrictions and price controls. Demographic changes - Anticipated demographic changes may support or negatively impact the growth potential of your industry and market. This includes factors such as education, age, income and geographic location. Emerging technology - Technological changes that are occurring may or may not favor the actions of your enterprise. Cultural trends - Cultural changes such as fashion trends and life style trends may or may not support your offering's penetration of the market
The Prospect It is essential to understand the market segment(s) as defined by the prospect characteristics you have selected as the target for your offering. Factors to consider include:
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The potential for market penetration involves whether you are selling to past customers or a new prospect, how aware the prospects are of what you are offering, competition, growth rate of the industry and demographics. The prospect's willingness to pay higher price because your offering provides a better solution to their problem. The amount of time it will take the prospect to make a purchase decision is affected by the prospects confidence in your offering, the number and quality of competitive offerings, the number of people involved in the decision, the urgency of the need for your offering and the risk involved in making the purchase decision. The prospect's willingness to pay for product value is determined by their knowledge of competitive pricing, their ability to pay and their need for characteristics such as quality, durability, reliability, ease of use, uniformity and dependability. Likelihood of adoption by the prospect is based on the criticality of the prospect's need, their attitude about change, the significance of the benefits, barriers that exist to incorporating the offering into daily usage and the credibility of the offering.
The Product/Service You should be thoroughly familiar with the factors that establish products/services as strong contenders in the marketplace. Factors to consider include:
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Whether some or all of the technology for the offering is proprietary to the enterprise. The benefits the prospect will derive from use of the offering. The extent to which the offering is differentiated from the competition.
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The extent to which common introduction problems can be avoided such as lack of adherence to industry standards, unavailability of materials, poor quality control, regulatory problems and the inability to explain the benefits of the offering to the prospect. The potential for product obsolescence as affected by the enterprise's commitment to product development, the product's proximity to physical limits, the ongoing potential for product improvements, the ability of the enterprise to react to technological change and the likelihood of substitute solutions to the prospect's needs. Impact on customer's business as measured by costs of trying out your offering, how quickly the customer can realize a return from their investment in your offering, how disruptive the introduction of your offering is to the customer's operations and the costs to switch to your offering. The complexity of your offering as measured by the existence of standard interfaces, difficulty of installation, number of options, requirement for support devices, training and technical support and the requirement for complementary product interface.
MARKET RESEARCH
Market research is generally either primary or secondary. In secondary research, the company uses information compiled from other sources that appears applicable to a new or existing product. The advantages of secondary research are that it is relatively cheap and easily accessible. Disadvantages of secondary research are that it is often not specific to your area of research and the data used can be biased and is difficult to validate. Primary market research involves testing such as focus groups, surveys, field tests, interviews or observation, conducted or tailored specifically to that product.
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Market information
Market information is making known the prices of the different commodities in the market, the supply and the demand. Information about the markets can be obtained in several different varieties and formats. Examples of market information questions are: 1. 2. 3. 4. Who are the customers? Where are they located and how can they be contacted What quantity and quality do they want? When is the best time to sell? Market segmentation
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Market segmentation is the division of the market or population into subgroups with similar motivations. Widely used bases for segmenting include geographic differences, personality differences, demographic differences, use of product differences, and psychographic differences.
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Market trends
The upward or downward movements of a market, during a period of time. The market size is more difficult to estimate if you are starting with something completely new. In this case, you will have to derive the figures from the number of potential customers or customer segments. [Ilar 1998] But besides information about the target market you also need information about your competitor, your customers, products etc. Lastly, you need to measure marketing effectiveness. A few techniques are:
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Customer analysis Choice Modelling Competitor analysis Risk analysis Product research Advertising the research Marketing mix modeling
MARKETI G STRATEGIES OF BS L
1. Introduction.
Our visions begin with our desires.
We all have some visions of ourselves and our future, and that vision creates consequences. More than any other factor, vision affects the choices we make and the way we spend our time.
Visions drive consequences. Principles drive results. Key is to base vision on principles.
Stephen R Covey. It is true for individuals as well as organizations. The strongest form of vision / motivation is to base vision on "What Legacy we want to leave." And to achieve it we must take a principled centered path. History is full of examples that many organizations have vanished grown and vanished overnight as their path to achieve vision was not based on principled way. Vision of the organization can only be translated into reality, if it is shared by one and all. The best way to implement is to involve them in formulation. But even if it is conceived by higher management then it has to be explained to each and every individual of the organization, otherwise it may remain as a showpiece. Marketing vision of the BSNL has to be based on overall mission and vision of the organization. The mission of BSNL is
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To provide world class State-of-art technology telecom services on demand at affordable price. To provide world class telecom infrastructure to develop country's economy.
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And the vision of BS L is i. To become the largest telecom Service Provider in Southeast Asia.
In dynamic environment anything permanent is "CHANGE". So we must revise and review so that focus is never lost.
Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.
2. Marketing Objective. The ultimate objective of any marketing activity is to satisfy the customers and today even a step ahead i.e. 'delighting' the customers, for which customers are offered something beyond their expectations from the service or the product. The objective being to acquire and retain the customers, who should continually feel that they are getting more value of the money, they are departing with. Marketing is the establishment, development, maintenance and optimization of long-term mutually valuable relationships between consumers and organisation. Successful Marketing focuses on understanding the needs and desires of the customers and is achieved by placing these needs at the heart of business by integrating them with the organisation strategy, people, technology and business processes. At its most basic, Marketing involves customers, organisations and relationships and the combination creates the need for the management. Marketing is about creating a competitive advantage by being the best at understanding, communicating, and delivering and developing existing customer relationships in addition to creating and keeping new customers. The concept of the product life cycle is giving way to customer life cycle, focusing on developing products that anticipate the future needs of existing customers and creating services that extend the existing customer relationship beyond the mere transaction. The customer life cycle will focus on lengthening the life span of the customer with the organisation rather than the endurance of a particular product. Customers have changing needs as their life styles alter- the development and provision of products and/or services that continuously seek to satisfy those needs is good Marketing. The Marketing will focus greater attention on how to deliver customer satisfaction and organisation will begin to structure itself around customer segments and not product lines. A good Marketing Strategy will take the business vision and apply it to the customer base. Kenneth Hildebrand.
Once marketing is understood, we can define marketing management process as analyzing marketing opportunities, researching and selecting target markets, designing marketing strategies, planning marketing programs, and organizing, implementing, and controlling the marketing efforts. In simple words it implies a buyer, a seller, bonded by the mutual need, satisfying offer and a medium/process to exchange the offer. 3. Marketing Process. We often talk of marketing & Sales and often use it interchangeably without understanding the difference in it. Marketing is everything we do to get and leverage a client relationship. Marketing process is broad and includes all of the following: Discovering what product, service or idea customers want. Producing a product with the appropriate features and quality. Pricing the product correctly. Promoting the product; spreading the word about why customers should buy it. Selling and delivering the product into the hands of the customer. Selling is one activity of the entire marketing process. Selling is the act of persuading or influencing a customer to buy (actually exchange something of value for) a product or service.
4. Contrasting the Sales Concept with the Marketing Concept:We Sell Confidence. The concepts surrounding both selling and marketing also differ. There is a need for both selling and marketing approaches in different situations. One approach is not always right and the other always wrong - it depends upon the particular situation. In a marketing approach, more listening to and eventual accommodation of the target market occurs. Two-way communication (sometimes between a salesperson and a customer) is emphasized in marketing so learning can take place and product offerings can be improved. A salesperson using the sales concept, on the other hand, sometimes has the ability to individualize components of a sale, but the emphasis is ordinarily upon helping the customer determine if they want the product, or a variation on it, that is already being offered by the company. In the sales approach, not much time is spent learning what the customer's ideal product would be because the salesperson has little say in seeing that their company's product is modified. Furthermore, they aren't rewarded for spending time listening to the customer's desires unless they have a product to match their desires that will result in a sale.
5. Mission & Vision.
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach. Most of the big companies have a Vision & Mission statement so as to guide their all energy, efforts to realize it. BSNL also has a vision 'To become the largest Telecom Service provider in South East Asia'. Firstly we need to understand the parameter for being the largest. Is it revenue, ARPU, profit, subscribers, Network (no of exchanges, BTS etc)? From monopoly to multi operator scenario, BSNL's market share is bound to reduce. But how much down we will let it? There are lot of similarities between British Telecom & us. One must keep watch on market share in monthly growth and take timely action. To improve our share, we need to acquire more than 50% of new acquisitions while maintaining earlier. This is quite challenging in this dynamic environment. Today landline base is reducing across globe, but why? Europe defines an operator with 25% or more market share as Significant market Power (SMP), while they intend to increase it to 40%. BSNL has been the largest operator and we must strive not only to maintain but enhance it. We need to act fast. Timely action is an essence. 6. Brand Equity. We may think what is Brand equity? In simple words it is how far people are willing to pay if we increase our prices i.e. premium for our services. We may feel happy to say there is lot of black marketing of our SIM cards. Is it a healthy sign? We reduce prices when competitors launch new schemes. Does it imply poor brand equity? Brand Equity can be built with good equity of quality of services at the affordable price. Continuous innovation in product and delivery of services with the appropriate pricing is the key strategy for developing the trust in customer so that he keeps his loyalty with BSNL. We have to be first mover in our efforts for product and price differentiation. Presently the market is in growth phase and price could be a differentiating factor, but how long? Is any scope left for further cuts? Ultimately it is the quality, customer care, and timely availability apart from price, which will matter. Quality depends on many parameters such as tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Competence, Courtesy, Credibility, Security, Access, and Communications with customer, Understanding etc. Quality definitely commands premium. Why are people willing to pay more for Raymonds or Adidas or Sony when comparable offers exist in market? One may say that customer perception of quality is not built overnight; it may require a brand and brand building investments apart from a quality product. How many brands do we have? Our investments get diluted with more number of brands. Even Airtel merged the Touchtel brand with more popular one. Can't we have just one brand i.e. BSNL? Have we ever tried to examine our revenue breakup? While majority of the revenue comes from landline (DELs plus PCOs), how many people know of Bfone? CellOne happens to be more popular.
7. Social Responsibility. We were the most trusted telecom brand in year 2003 & 2004. We have been given Golden Peacock award for Best Corporate Social responsibility. How can we leverage these distinctions? These achievements need to be highlighted through public relation exercise like press meet. This will help us in building our marketing image. In sales and distribution front though we have over one-lakh retailers, 1000 franchisees, 3300 CSCs, 36000 exchanges why are we not visible like others? Why can't we utilize all possible space? Can't we leverage our franchisee and STD-PCO strengths? Can we make these outlets as our core strength? Why our recharge coupons, India Telephone Cards are in shortage when there is no capacity constraint? Does it imply that our planning for printing, inventory management, logistics, and supply chain and of course franchisee management is inefficient? Do we have targets for these just like DELs & CellOne? Why can't we leverage this huge network for better customer care and improve collection efficiency? We must realize that with waiver of security deposits, no OYT schemes, no advance rentals, adjustment of landline security for CellOne, we don't get fixed deposits to meet our funds requirements. Everything has to be met from Operating revenues. We need to improve collections, realize bills early, not on the last day of payment and reduce bad debts. We need to provide 24X7 culture in our organization, though we have been providing operation and maintenance on 24X7 basis in the past and we will continue to provide in future too, but what about provisioning customer care and marketing on 24X7 basis? 8. Business Development. Business development units have been given the task to develop and nurture longterm relations with corporate houses. Many MoUs have been signed. Bulk bills are being issued. One-point payments are being realized for multiple service locations. Key Account Manager concept has been introduced. All this requires change of mindset in addition to the skills of marketing & sales. Do we have skilled manpower? Is our organization setup apt for better results? The staff expense to revenue ratio could be a good indicator. No doubt our revenues are up. Profit has increased. But consider the marketing budget we have in comparison to others. Even with this little budget many circles are unable to utilize it. We need to probe ourselves. Corporate office has permitted delegation of upto 70% of Circle budget to SSAs. Does it mean that our budget planning is wrong? How should we allocate marketing budget and which parameter to weigh?
•Per DEL/Mobile •Acquisition cost •Life time value •Competitor spend •Growth targets
9. Life Time Value
You can't give people pride, but you can provide the kind of understanding that makes people look to their inner strength and find their own sense of pride.
Charleszetta Waddles. Let us understand what is the lifetime value of our customers? Paying commission of Rs 100-200 to franchisee is not a cost considering the future flow of revenue from the customer. How many of our decisions are based on scientific analysis of the precious customer data we already have such as calling pattern, payment habits, usage profile etc? How many surveys we do, how much customer research we carry out? Net growth in mobile is high but what about churn? Can't we analyze & reduce it? Acquisition cost is usually said to be 5-8 times the retention cost. It is high time we learn fast, groom ourselves, improve our mindset and act fast. Business perspective is equally important as excellence in Telecom operations, maintenance, and installations & planning. Our core competence should be telecom business acumen and not just traditional expertise developed over the years. It is usually much easier to sell additional things to existing customers than to add new customer. Let us try to upgrade each customer by RS 20 - RS 50 by offering them more add on relevant services.
BSNL on brand building mission to face rivals
Public sector BSNL, the country's largest integrated telecom services provider, is about to go on a brand-building binge across its entire services portfolio to hold on to customers in the face of intense competition from rivals like Bharti Airtel, R-ADAG, Hutch-Essar and Idea . BSNL has roped in some of the biggest agencies like Grey Worldwide, Euro RSCG and Media Direction (the media arm of RK Swamy BBDO) to vitalise its mobile, landline, WLL and broadband services brands in all telecom circles, except Mumbai and Delhi where MTNL is the service provider . Confirming this, D.N. Sahay, joint deputy director general (marketing) at BSNL told ET: "We have empanelled three agencies for our different service categories. Grey Worldwide for CellOne mobile services, Euro RSCG for landline/broadband, while Media Direction will handle media duties." When contacted, a Sanchar Bhawan source said: "BSNL's objective is to build brand loyalty among its subscribers by establishing direct connectivity across landline, mobile, WLL and broadband segments. One of the biggest challenges will be coming up with communication solutions to tackle issues like 'customer churn' with its near 50 million customers, besides building deeper levels of trust."
BSNL's mega brands mandate is seen as a precursor to the much-awaited synergy between BSNL and MTNL. DoT officials recently indicated that efforts were on to evolve a unified marketing strategy for the two telecom PSUs ahead of their integration. The size of the media account at Rs 100 crore makes its one of the largest corporate accounts farmed out this year. Something that reflects BSNL's ambitious bid to talk to customers directly. The move is a significant departure from BSNL's largely passive communication strategy . It now wishes to engage its four crore plus telecom subscribers in more meaningful dialogue. BSNL officials, however, declined to detail specific commercials of the national brand building mandate. "For BSNL, it signals a decisive change in national communications strategy. Unlike conventional media plans, this is not about reach alone. It is about creating appropriate media programmes in response to specifc business issues. As a media house, we are taking strategic initiatives to approach client issues through customised media solutions.
CUSTOMER CO VE IE CE IS THE PRIORITY: BS L
Q.1) On the occasion of World Telecom Day, what are the new themes and initiatives that you would like to communicate to telecom users across the country? This year the ITU has adopted the theme 'Connecting persons with disabilities ICT opportunities for all' to address the special requirement of persons with disabilities. BSNL has launched a special scheme for the handicapped persons in PCOs. There is no security deposit and no minimum guarantee revenue for the PCO taken by handicapped persons. Q.2) The telecom revolution in India has been largely possible due to the presence of institutions like BS L. What has been your observation about the role played by BS L Maharashtra Circle towards this? BSNL Maharashtra Circle has played a key role in the development of Telecom Revolution in the state. With BSNL presence in the remote areas and villages, organizations like SBI and LIC have built-up the network on BSNL Leased lines. Telecom infrastructure is being provided by BSNL to state projects like SWAN, MSEB. Q.3) What were the various challenges faced and what was BS L Maharashtra Circle's strategy for overcoming them? The telecom Market is highly competitive market and for there have been many challenges faced by BSNL. Problems with respect to permissions from statutory bodies like municipal corporation/ Panchayat / Electricity Boards, etc. for tower installation/ laying cables/Electric connections are being faced. Despite all the odds, BSNL Maharashtra Circle is moving ahead and focusing on giving the best customer care so as to retain the existing customer base and acquire new customers. Q.4) What were the various goals set at each stage and how were they achieved? This year, one of BSNL's goals is Customer Delight where the focus is on Customer Care and to give timely after Sales Service as well as ensure availability of the product at the nearest point to the customer. In a nutshell, the customer convenience is the priority. We have declared this year as Customer Care Year and so the efforts are being made to give quality customer service and to deliver the services at the doorsteps of the customers. To serve the customer 24 hours, we have started a 24x7 Customer Care Call Centre in landline for the entire Maharashtra Circle at Pune.
Q.5) Which are the recent steps taken by BS L Maharashtra Circle to meet the competition among telecom service providers? BSNL is ready to take on the competition. Competition brings out the best in us and we have geared up for this. Various schemes have been launched in different product categories to provide affordable and quality service to the customer. At present the area of concern is declining landline base and PCO base. To combat these BSNL is providing Broadband and landline combo offer. In PCO tariff has been rationalized and commissions have been made attractive. In addition the GSM PCO bundling schemes has also been launched to capture the PCO market. The services like intelligent network services comprising of toll free numbers, universal access numbers, Voice VPN are useful for the organizations. To cater to the need of organizations having more number of staff, we are offering customized service and ensure the best service on affordable rate to them. With closed user group facility, the employees of an organization can talk freely with each other. Q.6) What will be the new era of telecom that we can expect by the year 2010? How will BS L Maharashtra Circle facilitate this? The coming era of telecom will be of Value Added Services. With the increasing tele-density, the market for Value Added Services will increase. Many things right from booking of the tickets, trading in the share market, entertainment, will be available on the mobile in local languages. At present we are giving the current news, travelling information, entertainment, jokes, ring tones, stock prices and much more on the BSNL mobile. Do you see the scope for promoting the usage of telecom services more aggressively in the state? Yes, there is a huge scope for promoting the use of telecom services in the state. Initially the mobile was used by only affluent people, now it has become part and parcel of everyone's life. With the hidden potential in the rural market and increasing number of telephones, telephone usage will definitely increase. In addition with the segmentspecific plans, we will be able to add more subscribers and usages. Q.7) What are the services that have played a key role in the growth of telecom so far and what are the services that will drive growth in the future? Presently the growth is in the mobile service followed by the broadband. In the near future the growth may be seen in the Value Added Services and in the rural market. As every customer wants service at the doorstep and to give the service of any kind telecom plays an important role to make it happen. Despite all the constraints and tariff reductions, BSNL Maharashtra Circle has been able to achieve the highest turnover amongst BSNL Circles in the country during 2007-08.
Q.8) Please mention some of the memorable milestones achieved by BS L Maharashtra Circle so far? With innovative schemes and proper co-ordination among various wings, BSNL Maharashtra Circle has given a record of 4.2 lakh connections in the month of March 2008. 1.25 lakh connections were given in a single day on 31st of March 2008! Q.9) Landmark achievements of Maharashtra Telecom Circle during 2007-08: Maharashtra Circle added 1.22 lakh net GSM connections in one day on 31st March 2008. Also, through a balanced combination of innovative promotional schemes, marketing efforts and collective team work of various units in SSAs, channel partners, and Mobile unit of Maharashtra Circle 3.52 lakh net mobile connections were added during March 2008, making the total no. of GSM connection in the Circle 32 lakh. Prepaid revenue of MH Circle for March '08 rose to Rs.115.54 cr. In a short duration of 4 days through promotional scheme of Recharge Coupons, around Rs. 60 cr revenue has been earned. BSNL Maharashtra Telecom Circle has doubled its Broadband customer base in the current financial year from 90,000 to 1,80,000 customers. The year 2007 had been declared as the Year of Broadband and these figures speak for themselves. Q.10) What are your future plans for BS L Maharashtra Circle? This year, BSNL Maharashtra Circle plans to add another 35 lakh mobile capacity, 2 lakh WLL capacity and 4 lakh broadband capacities. In addition to the Broadband expansion, a pilot project the Wi Max service is also being rolled out in BSNL Maharashtra Circle. Q.11) What's new?. Bundling of GSM PCO: GSM (Mobile) PCO is very convenient for the end users as well as franchisee. There is no registration, no security deposit.Cost of the SIM card is Rs. 200 with a free talktime of Rs. 50. On the initial recharge of any amount, a bonus talktime of Rs. 500 is offered. For subsequent 11 months, a bonus free talktime of Rs.100 per month is offered if the value of recharge is more than Rs. 500. Under the bundling scheme with a meagre investment of Rs. 3000, wherein he already has earned a free talk-time of Rs.550, any person can start a BSNL GSM PCO. BSNL has tied up with M/s Accord and M/s Visiontek for supply of compatible machines. This being a mobile PCO, has its own advantage of mobility from place to place. For the end user, the tariff is very convenient; Re 1 per minute within Maharashtra & Goa and Rs.2 per minute for outside Maharashtra & Goa within the country. Auction of Vanity Mobile Numbers: Auction of Vanity Numbers has started from March 2008 and the details of vanity numbers, reserved price and bidding procedure is available on http://www.maharashtra.bsnl.co.in
BSNL mobile's CellOne menu: The CellOne menu available on BSNL Mobile provides easy access to News, Entertainment, Finance, TV schedules, Travel, Downloading logos, pictures, ringtones, Astrology, Cricket and many such services. IPTV: BSNL Maharashtra Circle has launched IPTV in Pune. The multiplay services offered therein include TV, Broadband, ?.. Free Insurance: All BSNL's postpaid customers (Landline, Mobile and WLL) are automatically covered with free personal accident insurance coverage of Rs. 50,000. No paper work, no premium to pay. BSNL has tied up with Bajaj Allianz. Bundling of handset: BSNL has signed agreement with LG, BenQ, Digibeeand Beetel for bundling of handset and SIM. The bundled products are available in the range of Rs. 1100 to Rs2000 (Approx.). Q.12) What's popular?. VAS on Mobile & Landline: Value added services such as music, ringtones, News, astrology, cricket, Railway PNR enquiry and many more interesting services are available on BSNL mobile as well as landline. BSNL has signed agreements with various content providers for providing these interesting and informative contents at just Rs. 5 per minute from mobile and Rs.1.20 for 30 seconds from landline. These services are very popular and are widely used. Unlimited GPRS: BSNL offers unlimited GPRS at just Rs. 199 per month. By connecting the mobile to computer via Bluetooth or data cable the mobile customers of BSNL can enjoy unlimited download on their laptops while on move. Q.13) High-Tech services for Corporate Sector: Leased Lines: There are 9125 leased lines working in BSNL Maharashtra Circle as on date. Long list of the customers includes State Bank of India, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, and so on. SBI is one of the biggest customer having 13,500 leased lines across the country. Managed Leased Line Network (MLLN) is also provided in most of the parts of the Circle. MLLN enables BSNL to provide time dependent bandwidth as per the customer's requirement. MPLS VPN: The most secured, economical and fast mode of data transfer is MPLS VPN. Preferred by companies like ICICI Bank, Indusind Bank, UTI Mutual Fund, New India Assurance, Cipla, etc. Country's financial hub, the Bombay Stock Exchange is one of the biggest customers of BSNL's MPLS VPN. Toll Free Number: The perfect service for the service industry like hotels, airlines, insurance companies and so on. In fact its suitable for any business which wants to increase the customer base and wants more and more customers to call in for information. In this age where customer care is the key to success, Toll Free Number for the customers to call in is absolutely essential. Some of BSNL's satisfied customers are
Kingfisher, Reliance Industries Ltd., Barclays, Mahindra & Mahindra Finance Service. Televoting: In an era where opinion/ vote of every individual counts in everything possible, BSNL's Televoting is hugely popular and widely used. Some of the shining examples of success are Zee TV's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Sony TV's Indian Idol, and Star TV's Kaun Banega Crorepati. It is also useful for publications for carrying out opinion polls, running contests, etc. Centrex: It is a cost-effective and contemporary facility for large Corporate and Small Business Houses. It is a central office based communication service which integrates all the multi located Telephone lines of a customer (Existing and New) into a single highly functional communication group with more distinctive features without any additional equipment (like EPABX) at your premises. It offers features like intercom dialing, distinctive ringing, directed call wait, Direct Inward Dialling (DID), Direct Outward Dialling, Location Dialling, Unlimited growth etc. It can be called a ' Virtual EPABx.' Q.14) Customer convenience products: India Telephone Cards (ITC): The India Telephone Cards are the prepaid cards for making local, STD and ISD calls from telephone not having the respective facility. The telephone from which the calls are made is not billed at all. The cards are available in the denominations of Rs. 100, Rs. 200, Rs. 500, Rs. 1000, Rs. 2000 and Rs. 5000. Validity of the cards varies with denominations. Call Now Cards: These cards are similar to India Telephone Cards but are more suitable for making ISD calls. Calls to US using a Call Now card of Rs. 5000 are as low as Rs. 1.75 per minute. Validity increases and call charges decrease as the denomination of the card increases. Fixed Line Prepaid PCO: As the name suggests it's a prepaid PCO. The FLPP cards are available in the denominations from Rs 500 to Rs 10,000 with a commission up to 38%.
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