Media and Marketing Clive Simpkins
MARKET-SHARE greed versus service standards calls for scrutiny in the cellular telephone industry.
I was advised by an overseas cellular guru that on the launch of cellular services, the existing telephone network operator is usually in a better technical position for the first year or so. It is then typically surpassed by the opposition, which is more market-driven and service- orientated.
So I signed up for a cellular connection with Vodacom, of which 50 percent is owned by telecommunications monopoly Telkom.
As history: years ago, Telkom selected Siemens transmission equipment for car phones, which cost on average R16 000. Had Telkom cared about market forces it would have used different equipment and virtually anyone could have had a car phone for about R1500.
Numerous overseas experts also advised on the retention of an analogue system for cellular, given the unique geographical challenges of South Africa. Digital is known to work best in high density urban areas. But Telkom decreed digital.
I’m persuaded cellular has taken off as it has because it’s a better alternative to the existing service. It’s fine and dandy for Vodacom to boast having 90 000 subscribers, which they aimed to have only in five years time.
What they’re clearly not boasting about, is the horrific congestion on their network, the irritating number of dropped, interrupted or cut-off calls and the reception “holes” in the system, Sandton City in the PWV being a classic example. Surely this must be the heart of yuppiedom, yet it seems to have the worst reception for cellular, my eight watt car booster notwithstanding. A friend now refers to his Vodacom line as the better dis- connection.
Vodacom’s marketing general manager, Joan Joffe, regularly extols the virtues of their voice mail. Yet voice mail is simply a poor euphemism for an answering machine. My own office research has shown that eight out of 10 people put down when getting a recorded message.
My experience with Vodacom voice mail has established that you may get your message only hours later — or even days later — in one case, which caused me major trouble.
So I opted to keep my pager, allowing my cellphone to divert to it, secure that my callers were getting a human being to talk to.
Out of curiosity, I got an MTN line to see how the opposition two watt network compared.
For weeks now, even a hand-held unit in a moving car has proven to give me better call connection and retention than my Vodacom eight watt service.
Vodacom may well be putting up aerials at the rate of nine a day according to CE Alan Knott-Craig. But how long does the client have to endure Telkom-vintage dis-service until the network roll-out and infrastructure catches up with the user base?
My personal protest and solution to the problem has been simple. My Vodacom simcards are now neatly filed under “cellular” in my office and I’ve voted with my feet — or is it with my ears?