New Cellular Operator will Start Operating

New Operator has been operating : 3, Ceria, Smart, and soon NTS, will they success selling their number ? We should analyze that thoroughly.

At the first era of cellular era, which can be called cellular establishment era (not really initial, there was komselindo era prior to this era), there were 3 big operator : Telkomsel, Satelindo and XL, and currently they are the big three. As they have already had loyal subscriber and nation wide coverage, they enjoy their role, but still do innovation to keep their old subscriber as well as attract new subscriber. They also reduce their tariff to compete with all other operators.

Then Esia, Flexi, Star-One and Fren are started. They offer low tariff to attract new subscriber, and some offer cheap mobile phone bundled with their service, and it succeed, except Star-One which doesn't look serious to advertise it's service and in expanding it's network. Now Esia, Flexi and Fren are built Nationally and continuously expanding. I called it cheap tariff era.

As new operator were succeed in attracting subscribers and get big profit, it's attract the other enterpreneur to built their own operator brand : Ceria by Sampoerna who has a lot of money after selling it's own Cigarette company, Smart by Sinarmas which is an old conglomerate has various business in Indonesia, 3 by Hutchison from Hongkong, and NTS which owned by Saudi's company, Maxis Malaysia and Lippo.

It should be quite difficult for those four operator to attract subscribers. Good service and low tariff has been implemented by established operator, and they offer big bonus, and they are so famous. For new subscriber, most of them will buy the established service, rather that the new four. Only tiny part of them will buy their service. Beside, the new four doesn't offer something difference : low tariff (not the lowest), good service (really ?).

For most of subscriber, the decision of buying or not buying mostly will be based on the initial price of service subscription, including the mobile phone price. This is because the reluctance for persons to discard previous number. If the new operator is only offer what look similar with other operator, no body will consider it seriously.

The marketing team should work hard to find an innovative strategy, work together with mobile phone manufacturer to offer bundled service with mobile phone, or even give away a mobile phone, so people will come and buy the service. Next, they can go to established operator to get a cheap inter-connection.

The point is, it is important that the operator get as much as subscriber as they can, then they will only have to collect money from subscriber.