Essential Telecommunications Pricing Tool

Tarifica’s mobile pricing database is a powerful tool for efficiently searching, sorting, retrieving and analyzing Tarifica’s vast repository of mobile data, which currently includes every plan, package, offer and price from over 275 mobile operators in 73 countries Worldwide. It has dynamic search capabilities that enable users to gain competitive intelligence across countries, regions or the entire globe. The interface is intuitive, making for a user-friendly experience with a very short learning curve. It has proven to be the most valuable interactive tool used by international telecommunication mobile service operator pricing and marketing specialists.

Preview Tarifica's database now: Tarifica Mobile Database Features & Highlights

To learn more about Tarifica, please visit:  www.tarifica.com 

Tarifica Announces Major Findings From Latest Research

A recent survey by Tarifica of both SMBs and Enterprises in the U.S. found that a great majority plan to use hybrid services to transition from premises-based telephony (“CPE”), contact center and Unified Communications to similar services in the Cloud over the next three years. Only about a quarter of companies surveyed did not plan to use hybrid services for telephony or UC, while a slightly higher percentage did not plan to use hybrid contact center services. Of those planning to use hybrid services the majority expect to phase out their use of CPE-based applications over time in favor of total cloud solutions. 

“The high level of planned adoption of hybrid solutions found in the research was somewhat surprising,” said Ken Dolsky, Tarifica Program Director, “but it makes sense as a risk management approach. Customers are sold on many cloud benefits and are looking for ways to try it with non-mission critical applications before moving more important applications.” 

The study analyzed the differences in needs between SMBs and Enterprises regarding successful hybrid solutions. It also determined the current level of satisfaction with different hybrid application implementations. One key finding is that customers report being far more satisfied with cloud-based telephony implementations than those for UC and contact center (see chart ). The major issues with the two latter applications are based on poor performance on the part of service providers both in the planning/implementation process and in ongoing service support. However, less than half of the customers were satisfied with telephony hybrid solutions, showing that operators have their work cut out for them. “In many countries operator market shares are fairly static. The transition to cloud via hybrid solutions is extremely strategic as it provides operators the opportunity to change the market share dynamics in their countries. Those who can satisfy their customers could dominate this market for some time to come,” stated Richard Dorfman, Managing Director at Tarifica.  

Tarifica is the global leader in monitoring and analyzing telecom pricing. Covering hundreds of operators in every region of the globe, Tarifica’s databases of mobile, fixed line data and voice tariffs are among the largest and most in-depth in the world. Tarifica is also a leading publisher of benchmark and other pricing reports, and its analysts are recognized authorities in the telecom industry, relied upon by operators and businesses worldwide for pricing insight and guidance.

To learn more about Tarifica, please visit www.tarifica.com 

Tarifica Global Insights Series

The pace of change in the mobile services industry is constantly accelerating. This means new opportunities will arrive faster than ever before and are likely to play out more quickly as well. Operators must watch carefully for these ‘waves of opportunities’ and quickly take advantage of them before they either become mainstream (and no longer have special value) or become obsolete as new disruptions impact the market.

The Tarifica Global Insights Series analyzes and reports on innovative practices in the development and marketing of consumer mobile plans. Each report describes a significant opportunity in mobile plan development and how operators are creating new plans in response to that opportunity. The series provides comprehensive, in-depth information that identifies best practices across more than 25 countries representing every region in the world, and enables operators to quickly and successfully take advantage of new strategies in plan development and marketing. The reports include case studies in multiple regions that describe best plan implementation and marketing practices that have enabled operators to quickly and successfully take advantage of new opportunities through innovative mobile plan development and marketing.

This series of reports is an important resource for operators that are searching for new and better ways to increase revenue and profits, desire to be perceived as leading edge ‘first movers,’ or need to defend their market share against disruptive offers from competitors. These reports enable operators to take advantage of Tarifica’s unique global vantage point to more quickly bring leading edge offers to market that capture new revenue opportunities.

The Tarifica Global Insights Series is an annual program comprised of four quarterly reports as shown below.

2016 Report Series 

QUARTER 1 (FEBRUARY 2016): Designed for Success – Developing Plans for the Youth and Student Demographic
 Globally, over half the world’s population is under the age of 30. While this percentage varies from country to country, the youth/student market segment has unique needs that must be understood in order to take advantage of this revenue opportunity. Moreover, when young people transition into adulthood and begin to make independent financial decisions, incumbency presents a unique opportunity for mobile operators to win long-term customers. This report will focus on the plans, promotions and other initiatives undertaken by operators to win and hold this key demographic.

QUARTER 2 (MAY 2016): Adapting to Changing Expectations – New Strategies for Pricing Smartphones and Pairing Them with Mobile Plans 
The practice of offering heavily subsidized devices tied to long-term plans no longer meets users’ needs for faster upgrades and shorter or more flexible contracts. As a result, operators are experimenting with numerous other models for selling high-end smartphones to their subscribers. This report will examine financing options, new phone replacement programs and other strategies aimed at helping consumers obtain smartphones and ramping up customers’ monthly mobile spend.

QUARTER 3 (AUGUST 2016): New Frontiers of Mobile Offerings –Partnerships with Streaming Audio and Video Services 
Operators around the world are exploring new revenue sources beyond mobile data. One approach is to partner with streaming media companies such as Spotify and Netflix. Mobile operators are increasingly offering plans with these services included or available as add-ons. This report will focus on the demographics and unique needs of this target market and their impact on plan structures, promotions, marketing practices and pricing. It will also analyze the differences among the various streaming services in terms of consumer perceptions.

QUARTER 4 (NOVEMBER 2016): Avoiding the ‘Dumb Pipe’ Trap – Innovative Approaches to Packaging and Pricing Data 
The decline in calling and messaging revenue has made many operators ever more dependent on data. This has made it difficult for operators to differentiate their offerings without lowering their per-GB price. Many mobile operators have been experimenting with new pricing models for their data to overcome this challenge. Among the many initiatives employed are offering time-limited data, having zero rated or dedicated data allowances for specific services/apps, offering rollover data, etc. This report will identify and analyze all of these tactics, with particular focus on their impact on consumer satisfaction, churn reduction and ARPU.

Analyst Support 

Every subscription comes with five hours of analyst support. Subscribers also receive one-on-one briefing sessions with Tarifica’s Analysts each quarter. Sessions, which include a Q&A format, are designed to help subscribers gain a further understanding of the strategies, innovations, trends and opportunities occurring worldwide in mobile plan development. A subscriber’s colleagues are welcome to attend these briefings.

Subscriber Benefits

The Tarifica Global Insights Series provides subscribers with two distinct layers of analysis:

First, the reports analyze how each service/strategy was deployed, branded and marketed. The reports dive deeply into every element of these plans (their included service volumes, one-time costs, recurring charges, restrictions, marketing campaigns, and more) to provide a comprehensive look at precisely how these plans are being designed and launched. This level of specificity is critical for operators seeking to create successful programs in their own market.

Second, these reports bring to bear worldwide examples and case studies analyzing the factors behind the success or failure of these new strategies. Subscribers to The Tarifica Global Insights Series will be able to learn from operators at the forefront of innovative practices and strategies. Subscribers will be able to view and compare many different versions of these strategies and understand the regional factors involved.

The Tarifica Global Insights Series provides meaningful business intelligence that can be used to design plans that decrease churn and win new customers. Each report evaluates the success/failure of strategies based on key performance indicators, assesses the ease/difficulty of replicating each approach and provides detailed sets of best practices for adapting the program to other markets.

The Tarifica Global Insights Series will facilitate subscribers’ efforts to increase revenue and profitability, gain market share, demonstrate innovative leadership and rapidly take advantage of new market opportunities.

Subscription Fee
The price for an annual subscription that includes all four quarterly reports, five hours of enquiry support and quarterly one-on-one briefings is US $15,000. The subscription fee will be reduced to US $10,000 for orders placed by 15 February 2016, representing a 33% early purchase discount.

About Tarifica
Tarifica is uniquely qualified to provide this series based on its singular focus on researching and analyzing mobile plans around the world. In maintaining the Tarifica Mobile Database, Tarifica’s research team tracks and catalogs every mobile plan, rate and offer from over 250 MNOs and MVNOs in 66 countries in every region of the globe. This effort enables Tarifica’s analysts to gain a broad understanding of the latest innovations in plan development occurring worldwide. With this new report series, Tarifica leverages this focus to highlight and analyze the most impactful strategies on a global level.

sales@tarifica.com

Tarifica

Vodafone New Zealand Introduces Family Services Offering

Vodafone New Zealand has announced that it is offering a suite of family services that will help families stay connected and navigate the digital world. The group of four services includes digitally-offered parenting advice, mobile service packages that target families, technical teams that help families set up their digital services at home and online tools to help ensure the safety and security of children. The first service, which launched on 2 July, is Digi-Parenting, an online hub of articles, videos and printable guides that offer parenting advice. Vodafone has partnered with U.S.-based The Parenting Place and New Zealand nonprofit organization NetSafe to provide this product. The second offering in the suite enables families to connect all their mobile devices through a shared family plan—one of Vodafone’s Red Share plans. The family services offering has two apps—Vodafone Guardian, which enables users to set parameters on mobile devices, and Vodafone Blacklist, which allows customers to block numbers. Lastly, beginning in September, Vodafone families who want to connect their households with Vodafone broadband, mobile and fixed line services will have access to a technical support team to help them do so.

According to recent reports, New Zealand’s mobile phone penetration rate is around 125 percent, and there is great potential for it to continue to increase. This could be because all of the country’s operators have been offering attractive add-ons with their packages, and because the MNOs have improved their networks with the continued expansion of 3G/4G services. Vodafone, the country’s second-largest operator, has taken an interesting approach, both in the way it is promoting its family shared plan and in the way it is encouraging families to subscribe to triple-play offers of mobile, fixed line and broadband services. The operator is appealing to a family’s sense of unity and to parents’ desires to keep their children safe and secure. By marketing informational resources and apps that can be used to protect children from different types of cyber dangers with mobile packages and service offers, Vodafone has created a special offer for this targeted group and may bring in new subscribers and revenue with it. The additional fact that the data in the shared offer does not need to be divided equally among the plan participants is probably makes it even more appealing to this demographic.

The above item appeared in a recent issue of The Tarifica Alert, a weekly resource that analyzes noteworthy developments in the telecoms industry from around the world. Contact Tarifica for a subscription to the Tarifica Alert. 
Tarifica is the leader in monitoring and analyzing telecom pricing, covering hundreds of operators in every region of the globe. Tarifica’s databases of mobile and fixed line data and voice tariffs are among the largest and most in-depth in the world. Tarifica is also a leading publisher of benchmark and other pricing reports, and its analysts are recognized authorities in the telecom industry, relied upon by operators and businesses worldwide for pricing insight and guidance. Click here to contact a Tarifica Analyst.

Many Consumers Unaware Of Throttling.

Mozilla to Launch Firefox Smartphones in India

Mozilla will start selling the first Firefox OS smartphone models in India in July, according to reports. The devices will be available at retail prices of US $50 or less. The U.S.-based software company launched its smartphones in July 2013 in Latin America and Europe and to date has sold about 1 million units worldwide. Low-cost chips and an open-source operating system help keep the phones’ prices very low.

India is a very promising market for super-low-priced smartphones. While customers’ budgets are still tight there, on average, use of mobile data is rising rapidly, stimulated by operators’ investments in enhanced networks. According to a recent report, Vodafone India has seen a 230 percent increase in 3G adoption in the country’s rural markets. In order to avail themselves of the opportunities offered by 3G networks, rural customers need smartphones, and with its Firefox phones, Mozilla is well positioned to meet their needs.

The above item appeared in a recent issue of Tarifica's "The Story of The Week", a weekly report that analyzes noteworthy developments in the telecoms industry from around the world. For past issues or to learn more about The Story of The Week :  http://www.tarifica.com/storyoftheweek.aspx