Cellular Rate War

Hmmm, after several observation of the newest war in Indonesia (and yet fiercer than the last console war), The Cellular Rate War, I am tempted to write something about that.

Most Indonesian people know that in this recent days, the cellular providers were fighting one another in terms of cellular rate. They were competing in lowering the call rate. Wow, starting from 10/second, goes to 1/second, followed by the so-called zero rate (which turned out to be fraud!), and still went down to 0,5/second, 0,1/second, 0,01/second, and the latest, 600 for unlimited talk time.

However, most of the promotion ended up being another fraud. Say for example, the promotion of 1000/hour turned out to be hanged before we reach exactly an hour, meaning the cost will be higher than 1000. Or, the newest one, 600 for unlimited talk time turned out to be a bad quality call, like you;'re talking to a stuttering person.

Most ironically, I read a news in one of the national newspaper stating that in the case of emergency, a number from a certain cellular provider couldn't be used to call the ambulance. BAD NETWORK! So? Does this mean that the lower rate equal with lower service? Yet, many people had already blamed the provider for decreasing the service quality....... Profit oriented and thus neglecting the basic right of the customer.

Let's try seeing the problem from another angle. Let's see from the aim! Now, what is the aim of this program? Certainly to get many new costumer. And who are the customer? The newbie and YOUNGSTER!

Hey, what happened with the YOUNGSTER? Easy! According to marketing article, YOUNGSTER is a potential market field. Why? Because they are still unstable, easy to influence, and LOW LOYALTY! That's it! The teenagers will be easily migrating from one provider to the others. Really neglecting the previous one for the cheaper one. And the number of sold number will just be a number, for the teenagers will only buy, and most of the time will keep buying without maintaining!

So that is from the teenager case. Let's see from the upper class segment. Hey, do you think they prefer quantity over quality? WRONG! Quality and prestige is far more important for them. So? Well, they tend to look down at the 'cheap' provider, and most probably will keep maintaining their loyalty towards their previous 'card', even though it may be a bit more expensive. Can you imagine an executive prefer the cheap one with the bad receipt?

Then, what's the conclusion?

Easy! The more the war goes, the deeper the wound of the provider themselves.

Me? I never change my number ever since I got that. Why? Why bother!