New front opens in mobile battle

By RICHARD BRADDELL

After running second to Vodafone in the mobile stakes for much of last year, Telecom is confident it has stabilised and even recovered market share and is poised for growth.

Its general manager of mobile, Mohan Jesudason, says a vigorous repositioning prompted by Vodafone's success has stabilised Telecom's place at around two-thirds of the market. This year, Telecom has led price competition, dropping prices in aggregate by 20 per cent.

The impact of price cuts on revenue has cancelled out strong growth in customer numbers and network usage.

But Mr Jesudason says Telecom has set the scene to drive hard into the market when its code division multiple access (CDMA) digital network fires up in April or May next year.

According to research commissioned by Telecom, the company now ranks ahead of Vodafone in customer trust, value for money, fixing problems and showing the way to the future of telecommunications.

Although Telecom's customer survey shows recovery only in the last quarter, Mr Jesudason says lags in data collection on net customer sign-ups suggest that it has been ahead in the market share stakes for much longer.

A programme that began with the integration of four separate mobile divisions - corporate, business, consumer and network - at the start of the year has resulted in development of key attributes such as growth in customer base and brand loyalty and the expansion of distribution outlets.

Telecom mobile now has 1400 distribution outlets, giving it 60 per cent of that market and positioning it for accelerated growth when the CDMA network comes on stream.

CDMA, although still a second generation technology, is essentially the same that will be used when third generation mobile arrives in two or three years.

Its advantage over other cellular systems is that it offers good voice quality while providing a strong platform for the new high-growth data services that mobile operators will soon be rolling out.

Mr Jesudason said Telecom's CDMA network would give it a two-year jump on Vodafone.

One of the first services to be rolled out will be an exploitation of the improbably named 1XRTT, an enhancement that enables mobile data and internet to be offered at speeds of 144 kbps, or 2.5 times ordinary wireline dial-up modems.

Vodafone is at present in the process of launching a rival GPRS data service that theoretically has speeds well in excess of 100 kbps, although Vodafone has indicated that it will be unlikely to run at more than 24 kbps in the foreseeable future.

Mr Jesudason said the 144 kbps promised by 1XRTT would be its actual operating speed.

But Telecom is not waiting for CDMA to press home its advantage. Yesterday, it demonstrated a new mobile text-to-voice internet portal it plans to soft-launch next month over its existing analogue and digital networks.

After the full launch in February, customers will be able to use voice commands to navigate menus to call up voice versions of e-mails, horoscopes, Lotto results and news reports.