Cell C of South Africa argues that revenue, instead of subscribers, should be the yardstick to measure market share. Because, MTN and Vodacom lead with a combined 90% of total revenues while 10% belongs to Cell C. The mobile underdog blames the introduction of MTR and it has challenged the regulatory decree in the court. Cell C argued that revenue market share is a better indicator for sustainability in the mobile industry than subscriber market share ‘because operators require a significant upfront investment and ongoing investment for a network, IT billing systems, customer care, distribution points, sustainable channel partners, brand and customer retention’; these investments would only be recovered by a sustainable scale level, of approximately 20%-25% revenue market share, Cell C said. Full report.
Just returned from the sensory overload of the ITU Telecom World exhibition and forum in Hong Kong. One of the buzzwords/phrases floating around this year is multiple play. Triple play is passe though a few are hanging on with quadruple play. Given my recent column in LBO, my mind was on payments. Where in the multiple play talk was payments?