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Marketing of telecom services, particularly mobile services, has been a major
challenge to the service providers. Indeed, the environment has become very competitive in
the presence of many providers and especially in the context of introduction of
mobile number portability. In the last decade or so, the mobile penetration has been
unparalleled in the country, rural India being the `fortune at the bottom of the pyramid'.
Therefore, evolving an appropriate marketing strategy for rural market becomes important.
In marketing mobile services, it is indispensable that firms understand the likely impact
of price and non-price factors on demand (Monroe, 1989). This paper makes an
attempt to analyze various factors affecting the choice of mobile service providers and
mobile subscriptions based on a field survey conducted in Bishalkhinda Panchayat in
Odisha. To provide a background to the study, the following section explores major policy
changes witnessed by the telecom sector in India.
Telecom sector has witnessed significant changes in the policy approach, during the
last two decades. This is partially due to the changed perception of policy makers
regarding the potential of the telecom sector in stimulating economic growth. The Constitution
of India has classified telecommunication under Union list. Hence, all policies and
programs relating to telecommunication sector are economy-wide policies and programs.
In 1991, when Government of India introduced
economy-wide policy reforms, the bottlenecks caused by inadequate availability of telecom services and the
implications of non-availability of new services like mobile telephony,
radio-paging, etc., on economic development, were clear to the policy makers and
planners. By the time the desired policy reforms were introduced, the demand had far exceeded supply resulting
in large unmet demand. The incumbent Department of Telecommunication (DoT)
was unable to introduce any of the new services for want of
funds. |
