Mobily Partners With UFM Radio for Ramadan Content

Saudi operator Mobily is offering a package of content services for both individuals and families during the month-long (5 June–5 July) Muslim holiday of Ramadan through audio and text messages. Users can try the service free for the first week. Mobily and the UFM Radio station present exclusive services that can be obtained by sending a text message. These services include special holiday recipes, as well as “The Story of a Verse,” an educational service offering lessons from the Quran. There are also services offering instruction in Islamic history and teachings specifically aimed at women. As we have noted in the past, content services targeted at a particular ethnic or religious group are generally very successful for mobile operators, and these offerings of Islamic-oriented content from a Saudi operator during the holy month of Ramadan are a perfect example. All over the Islamic world, Ramadan is the occasion for operators to roll out promotions and religiously-oriented content. What makes this one noteworthy is the partnership with a radio station, because, as we have also noted frequently in the past, operators can shine in the area of value-added content by partnering with other entities that are better equipped to design and package such content. Mobily’s offer thus combines two basic principles of success for operators looking to transcend the “dumb pipe” role.

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

STC Offers The Highest Value Plans in Saudi Arabia While Mobily and Zain Tie for Second Place

Tarifica has announced the latest Tarifica Scores for postpaid mobile plans in Saudi Arabia.

The Tarifica Score™ is a proprietary algorithm used to evaluate mobile plans based on the value they offer consumers. It incorporates every aspect of each mobile plan (including usage allotments, geographic coverage, data speeds, value added features and promotional elements) and weighs them against each plan’s total costs to determine its consumer value. Scores range from 0 to 100.

“STC’s Postpaid 400 plans have the highest overall score in both the ‘without phone’ and ‘with phone’ categories,” said Jamie Davella, Tarifica’s Saudi Arabia Analyst. “In the without phone category, STC won because of its faster download speeds, while its with phone plans came out on top in that category because of their lower device charges. Interestingly, Mobily’s best overall plans (Wajid Extra) have more voice and text allowances than STC’s top plan and somewhat lower monthly fees but these attributes do not outweigh Mobily’s slower network speed and higher phone costs,” she continued.

Mobily and Zain are virtually tied for second place in the overall best plans category, scoring 94 and 93, respectively, among plans without phones, and 83 and 82, respectively, among those that include one.

Each operator wins its share of top honors for plans segmented by monthly charge. In fact, Mobily has the best plans in four of these subcategories while Zain wins in three and STC in two, indicating that the market is very competitive. Zain also wins the competition for offering the highest data allotment with its 1 Terabyte Package XTRA plans. Since the Tarifica Score uniformly cuts off all data allotments greater than 10 gigabytes in order to conform to most common usage patterns, plans with this extremely high volume of data did not win in either the overall or price-specific categories.

“In today’s mobile marketplace, consumers are flooded with hundreds of plan variations and constantly shifting promotions and deals—the majority of which come with different costs and services and access networks of differing strengths. When making a decision that will likely impact them for up to two years, consumers can use Tarifica Scores to cut through the clutter and identify those plans in every market segment that offer the best value for the money,” stated Tarifica Program Manager, Will Watts.

Ken Dolsky, Senior Program Director at Tarifica also commented on the market intelligence value to operators. “We see great interest in the Tarifica Score among mobile operators. Users gain access to our proprietary model which enables operators to design plans that score high in consumer-friendliness and value. They are also able to quickly see, in quantitative terms, the impact that competitive changes have on the market. In the case of Saudi Arabia, STC’s best plan scored six points better than Mobily’s best plan among those without phones but when its lower priced phone advantage was included it increased the gap between them to 17 points among plans that came with a device.”

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Worldwide Telecommunication Developments

Asia/Pacific

Hong Kong mobile operator SmarTone is re-entering the fixed market with ST Fibre Broadband—a range of broadband plans that offer different upload/download speeds. HomeFibre 200/500/1000 are available at respective monthly costs of HKD 220.00 (US $28.39), HKD 260.00 (US $33.65) and HKD 330.00 (US $42.58) and upload and download speeds of 200 Mbps, 500 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps. Users who subscribe to the operator’s Handset Bundled SuperFast Broadband & Voice Plan or the SIM only SuperFast Broadband & Voice Plan, both with at least 5 GB of data, will pay HKD 178.00 (US $ 22.97), HKD 198.00 (US $25.55) and HKD 218.00 (US $28.13), respectively, each month for the HomeFibre 200/500/1000 plans. Plan subscribers will also be able to access the internet through more than 11,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in shopping malls and restaurants across Hong Kong.

Europe

According to a recent survey of more than 2,000 U.K. residents, a reliable mobile signal is the most important factor that young home buyers (ages 18 to 35) consider when purchasing a real-estate property. To this demographic group, signal strength (45 percent) is more important than concerns about crime (26 percent), transportation (18 percent) and schools (17 percent). Of those survey-takers aged 55 and above, 26 percent said they considered mobile signal strength as the most important factor.

Latin America

Brazilian operator Telefónica Vivo is offering the Top-Up Vivo app to its prepaid and Control plan users. Through the app Android users can top up their accounts using MasterCard, Visa, Diners and Elo credit cards. The app will soon be available for iPhone and Windows Phone users.

Middle East/Africa

Saudi operator Mobily has introduced monthly roaming bundles that subscribers can customize to fit their needs. Users can select the number of call minutes and SMS and the data allowance that they want. Voice minutes and outgoing SMS can be selected in increments of 10 up to 100 units each month. Incoming SMS are not charged. Data can be selected in 50 MB increments of up to 500 MB.

North America

Through its Network Optimization policy, Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. operator, has been limiting the data speeds on its heaviest 3G users for the last three years. The policy is expanding, and Verizon will start to throttle data speeds on its 4G unlimited plans on 1 October. The operator is capping the speeds on the top 5 percent of 4G data users who are connected to a cell site that is experiencing peak usage at a particular time. Throttling will not apply to government organizations and businesses that have major accounts with the operator.

 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. To access all of the latest articles and issues:  http://www.tarifica.com/TarificaAlert.aspx

 

Demand for Mobile Data Plan Customization is High

A survey of over 500 mobile phone users in each of six markets—China, France, Germany, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.—indicates that consumers want more options to control and personalize the pricing of their data services. Sixty percent of mobile users want to be able to customize their plans, and 50 percent are interested in the ability to purchase more data directly from their devices, in real time.  Interest in plan customization is particularly strong in China (where 74 percent reported that they want it), the U.S. (67 percent) and the U.K. (58 percent). In China, interest in plan options for unlimited access to social media is especially high at 62 percent. In France, the number of users who are willing to accept continued use at lower speeds after data limits are reached is twice the number of those who would want to buy additional data. In Germany, over a quarter of mobile phone users see the appeal of buying an additional bucket of data beyond the original data cap. In Spain, mobile users are notably willing to accept continued use at lower speeds when they reach their data limit, with over half selecting throttling and only a fifth prepared to buy an additional data bucket. Forty-five percent express an interest in plans based on selecting how many minutes of browsing, video and music they use, rather than in a bucket of data.  As sophisticated markets reach saturation and mobile service becomes more and more of a commodity, competition among mobile operators is intensifying. As a result of that, consumers have more leverage than ever to demand what they want. As this study shows, what they want, by and large, is more control over their spending on data. The one-size-fits-all approach that derives revenue from charging users for data they do not use is likely a thing of the past. In the more affluent or aggressively growing economies such as the U.S., the U.K., Germany and China, the desire is more for flexibility, with users reporting that they would like the ability to add more data at will. In France and Spain, where budget-mindedness seems prevalent, users are more willing to accept throttling. In any case, in order to remain maximally competitive, MNOs are going to have to acknowledge these consumer needs and offer more customization across the board.

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

Zain Offers 1 TB Data Sharing Plan

Saudi MNO Zain has launched its latest postpaid plan, called Xtra. It offers a monthly allowance of 1 TB of data along with a free Mi-Fi device and three free data SIMs, thereby allowing users to share the data allowance between a maximum of four devices at the same time. The plan also provides a monthly allowance of 2,400 all-net minutes, 300 international minutes, unlimited all-net SMS and 512 MB of roaming data. The monthly subscription fee for the plan is SAR 1,000.00 (US $261.77). Subscribers can also select a “diamond vanity number” (a phone number whose corresponding keypad letters spell out a word or name), said by the operator to be worth more than SAR 100,000.00 (US $26,177.50), free with the plan.

Saudi Arabia is ranked among the top countries in the world in terms of smartphone penetration, with a rate in excess of 70 percent. Combine the increasing adoption of smartphones with the demographics of the country (70 percent of the population is under 30), and it is not surprising that mobile data use is rising rapidly. One study found that the Twitter penetration among internet users in Saudi Arabia is the highest in the world (150 million tweets sent per month in 2013), and 73 percent of Saudi Twitter users access their accounts through mobile phones. The same study also reported that Saudis watched 90 million YouTube videos per day in 2013, an average of 7 per user per day. Zain itself reported that in 2013 its 4G network saw a 600 percent increase in data traffic and a 1,400 percent increase in active user rates compared to the same period in 2012.

The three Saudi operators have been offering 4G since 2011, Zain having been the first to launch commercial services. The operators have been structuring plans to derive more revenue from data use by targeting specific customer segments and needs. While this latest plan, Xtra, may not see mass adoption due to its price point, it may appeal to a small segment of high-end heavy users, to whom it does offer value. Zain’s next-tier plan offers 10 GB of data, 1,200 minutes and unlimited SMS for a monthly fee of SAR 400.00 (US $106.61), while rival Mobily offers a postpaid data-sharing plan with unlimited data (throttled at 10 GB per month), 3,000 on-net minutes and SMS and 1000 all-net minutes and SMS for SAR 399.00 (US $106.35). If Zain’s new plan is successful, it will be able to attract a limited yet potentially profitable pool of high-quality customers. Since it is unlikely that anybody will use 256 GB on each of four devices in a month, this large data allowance as well as the inclusion of the diamond vanity number are probably symbolic in nature, and confer a premier status on those who subscribe to this plan.

 

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. To access all of the latest articles and issues:  http://www.tarifica.com/TarificaAlert.aspx

Powerful Insights into the Pricing Strategies of Mobile Operators

Competitor Intelligence Graphic 2013

Tarifica’s Competitor Intelligence Report is a comprehensive quarterly report that provides powerful and clear insights into the offerings and pricing strategies of mobile operators, serving as an invaluable guide to trends in operators plans, prices and offers. Tarifica can produce this report on more than 300 mobile operators it tracks worldwide.

The Competitor Intelligence Report tracks and graphs every consumer and business offer from a selected mobile operator, examining all of its plans by price, service features, device type and other metrics.  In addition to the numerical and graphical data, each report includes an Executive Summary containing Tarifica’s analysis of noteworthy trends and developments in the operator’s offerings.  These insights are combined with the data to provide a deeper understanding of the factors driving the numbers and the strategy/thinking of each operator.

Plans and prices are presented in local currency — so there is no need to perform any conversion.  Subscribers receive four quarterly reports.  Each report contains data from the previous four quarters, resulting in a trend analysis covering a total of seven quarters in an annual subscription.

Each subscription includes access to the Tarifica Analyst responsible for producing the report. This analyst is available to interpret the data and to answer any follow-up questions.  In addition, every report is accompanied by Tarifica’s current rate file for the operator, which provides in-depth details on each of its plans and can be used to dig deeper into the data for more analysis. 

Each Competitor Intelligence Report is an exhaustive study that covers the full scope and evolution of a mobile operator’s consumer and business offers, providing operators, regulators and other industry participants with actionable intelligence on the competition.

Each Competitor Intelligence Report answers critical questions about a mobile operator, including:

 Competitor Intelligence Graphic 2013

¨ How many plans of each type are offered (Consumer/Business, Prepaid/Postpaid, Device Included/No Device, No Data/Data Only, etc.) and how is this changing?

¨ How does the operator price all of its current plans and services and how have these evolved?

¨ What new services are being rolled out and how extensively?

¨ How many device-specific plans are being created/modified and for which devices (e.g., Smartphone, Tablet, USB Modem)?

¨ How is the operator designing data only plans? For instance:

− Data Allowance

− Connection Speeds

− Price per GB

¨ What types of bundles are being designed, how are they being priced, how has this changed and what is driving these changes?

¨ What types of plans are being emphasized/deemphasized?

To Contact Tarifica's Research Team:  http://www.tarifica.com/contactus.aspx