1. IMRB PoV on Telecom Sector Formatted: Indent: Left: -0.

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With the almost saturated urban market and a fast Formatted: Indent: Left: -0.16", No bullets or numbering,
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growing rural hinterland, the types of use that mobile

phones are put to have increased enormously. Fixed line
growth in the hinterland is hardly observed.
We see a lot of convergence between urban and rural
users in terms of how they engage with their phones. The
only limiting factors appears to be affordability
(smartphones as well as data/ talk time) and stability of
network.
With the spread of 4G coupled with much cheaper smart
phones (as little as INR 2999) we can expect a huge
explosion of data consumption.
Early signs of this are already observed in the fact that
recent household consumption data indicates that rural
consumers is trading their little snack luxuries for data so
as to be able to get their daily fix of infotainment.
We would not be surprised if we soon find clusters of
people walking purposefully in the by lanes of small town
India as they try and grab a Pokemon!
IMRB sees these as exciting times for both the network
and handset providers as well as consumers and with the
coming of yet another huge 4G player soon, we can expect
to see a significant dialing up of the game.
We see the telecom market as part of the ‘VFMCG’
category (very fast moving consumer good) and hence
players would need to adopt strategies that their veteran
FMCG counterparts have honed over years. From
shouting out of roof tops they need to nuance their
messaging and find the differentiating factor. Currently
the major brands go largely undifferentiated and each
player suffers huge churn in their customer base on an
annual basis. Number portability has not helped this case.
Right now the consumer is king and usually exercises the
value for money option when switching providers. The
game changer will be when the prepaid consumer refuses
to move from his provider by choice and this will take a
lot of doing.