LOCAL sungura musician Sulumani Chimbetu naturally has a lot of resemblance with his late father Simon. Report by Bernard Mpofu
That he would follow his father’s footsteps into the trade seemed like a foretold movie script. But a world of difference seems to separate the two. Both have used cellphones, but in different worlds.
Back in the late 1990s, when Zimbabwe’s cellular industry was at teething stage and looked promising, high profile personalities like Simon and renowned businessmen would flaunt brick-sized mobile phone handsets as a status symbols.
During Simon’s time cellphones were used mostly for voice and smses. But during Sulumani’s time cellphones have evolved into multi-media gadgets, with value added services.
This all changed after the introduction of the multiple currency regime in 2009 resulted in the price of subscriber identity module cards (sim cards) being slashed to 50 cents from as high as $100.
With ever increasing globalisation and expanding business activities, cell phones became a necessity for businesses.
Though times changed and the cellphone became a basic medium for communication, the younger generation also began to flaunt the gadgets as a status symbol.
With every other shop throughout the country selling mobile phone handsets, cellphones have fast evolved from being devices for voice and short message services (sms) to communication devices for education and in some cases comic relief.
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Experts say the near saturation point of the mobile phone market has spurred innovation of value added services.
Official figures show that data currently accounts for 13% of Econet’s revenue, with voice still maintaining its dominance.
In its equity strategy outlook, Invictus Securities, a local brokerage firm said the country’s largest mobile phone company had managed to grow its subscriber base buoyed by several measures which include tariff-reducing promotions.
“Following the 1H13 results, Econet launched the “Buddie Zone” promotion, giving callers discounts of up to 99% on calls, depending on the time of the day,” said the brokerage in a research note.
“This has seen the company increase its subscriber base by 14% since August 2012.
“In that four-month period, however, Telecel registered 17% growth.
“Mobile sim penetration has now reached 94% resulting from promotions and consequent double simming, this growth is likely to suppress the average revenue per user.
“Value added services have therefore become increasingly important as a revenue and profitability driver.”
The evolution of the country’s telecommunications sector has resulted in the minimal use of the classic sms platform as mobile phone users now opt for cheaper and more interactive platforms such as whatsapp and Viber.
With a view to reaping the benefits of the pre-paid segment, local mobile phone operators have stepped up their efforts in formulating advertising campaigns. Despite these technological advances, Blackberry service remains outlawed on the back of national security concerns.
Experts also contend that growth shows signs of continuing for the foreseeable future. This development, complemented with decaying infrastructure for fixed telephone lines, has resulted in mobile phone calls accounting for the bulk of inter-and-intra calls made in this country.
In June this year, the country’s largest mobile phone operators by subscribers — Econet Wireless Zimbabwe and Telecel Zimbabwe will renew their licences and receive a 15-year lease of life, should they raise the regulatory fees.
Due to the integration of telecoms services, government announced that it would issue the licences under the converged licencing framework at a fee of $180 million.
So important have telecoms firms become that the government now looks to them to raise funds to finance the forthcoming general elections expected in July.
With no changes to the telecoms law, competition in the sector will remain a three-horse race as the players brace for the astronomical hike in licence fees.
Currently, state-owned NetOne, the first mobile phone operator and previous market leader, is lagging behind due to underfunding, prompting questions on government capacity to run a profitable enterprise.
Efforts to court new investors appear futile.
Companies should innovate
INSPIRED to change your world, So go ahead and tell someone and The world in One. Pay-off lines for mobile phone service providers in the country say it all Econet Wireless, which claims to command 70% of the market, is keen to flaunt its size. It is “Zimbabwe’s largest provider of telecommunications services”.
Report by Vincent Kahiya
Telecel, second by some distance, is the “fastest growing network in Zimbabwe, offering value for money products and services” while NetOne which appears completely off the pace believes its first-mover advantage as “the first cellular network operator in Zimbabwe. . .” can still sell.
What is missing in the slogans for all three operators are confident declarations about the quality of their products and services.
It is all about size, organic growth and in the case of NetOne, being a pathfinder.
However, the parastatal is a victim of the well-advertised State lethargy that has reduced the operator to playing catch up with the other two networks which have picked up the ball and ran away with it.
We are, therefore, compelled to present an assessment of Telecel and Econet products from the point of view of users.
The mantras about size, potential to grow and growth, whether real or imagined, do not excite subscribers at all because there are statistical deviations which do not conform to the patronage figures the two networks say they enjoy.
Econet, with its eight million subscribers, has just about 3 000 Twitter followers and 165 000 likes on Facebook. Telecel, with over two million subscribers, has 41 000 Twitter followers and 167 000 likes on Facebook.
The superlative Telecel numbers negate the fact that the landing page of the company’s website loads at the speed of a glacier and when it finally opens, it is begging a designer to go easy with the red colour and add more useful details.
Opportunities are plentiful for Telecel to use social media to market its products, but sorting out the site and optimising it for mobile will be important.
These numbers say a lot about untapped potential abounding on the market. Operators have failed to take advantage of the opportunities presented by social media.
In short, their innovation has largely remained technical and not social.
The companies should be looking at competitive differentiation that is based on innovation. This entails developing a value propositions beyond simple voice, text and data.
The new growth for the operators should come from the enterprise marketplace, with the companies increasingly developing solutions tailored to the needs of a specific industry or market.
Econet and Telecel have recently launched integrated packages like the latter’s Red package and gadget deals for the former.
There is active promotion of data use by the operators notwithstanding connectivity constraints, dropped calls and simple services like credit transfer or credit balance inquiry not working.
In many parts of the developing world these connectivity constraints have fuelled tremendous creativity. Simple voice and text connections have brought about revolutions in access to financial, health, agricultural and education services and opportunities for employment.
For example, farmers in rural Kenya use SMS services to find out the daily prices of prices of agricultural commodities. This information allows them to improve their bargaining position when taking their goods to market, and also allows them to switch between end markets.
Our operators need to enter a new phase of innovation so subscribers start to derive greater value from owning a phone.
Ecocash is the most serious attempt at innovation, but is that all operators can do? For views and comments email: vkahiya@ zimind.co.zw
