The mental shock of competition


Posted on August 31, 2014  /  0 Comments

Bright people go into engineering in countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Engineers manage incumbent telcos. When I came to Sri Lanka as the regulator in 1998, I was surprised by some of the things my bright engineer friends said about losing market share. They talked as though this was something that could be stanched. I had to tell them that market share would necessarily have to go down because that’s what competition does. What they had to worry about was losing customers, especially good customers.

The problem seems to be endemic. The MPT official is talking about losing market share in the long term! With Ooredoo’s 1 million in three weeks, it’s already done. No need to foresee; no long term. Done.

An MPT official acknowledged the need for improvement. Democratic Voice of Burma quoted Kyaw Soe, principal of the MPT’s Telecommunications and Postal Training Centre, as saying: “At the moment, MPT dominates most of the market, but we do foresee that we will begin to lose market shares in the long term. For this, we are trying to make our services more convenient and reliable for our customers.” Users complain about MPT’s inadequate and unreliable services, DVB said.

Report.

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