Internet banking & the fight for mobile phone market share

With all mobile phone operators struggling with falling profits, focus on mobile phone & internet banking for pre-paid top ups.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Fight for mobile phone market share & internet banking top-ups

DTAC fight for market share: offers top-up data usage scheme
2/02/2017
Komsan Tortermvasana

The race to give away mobile handsets and offer free data is heating up among local mobile operators, with consumers enjoying more options than ever before as the market matures.

PROMOTING PRE-PAID TOP-UP VIA INTERNET BANKING

Internet and mobile phone banking to make pre-paid mobile phone top ups is the focus of a new DTAC promotional campaign launched yesterday. 

The campaign is aimed at boosting the company's customer base.

If customers top up their calling credit via digital transaction platforms from 12 banks they will get a baht-equivalent amount of free mobile internet usage.

This can translate to each baht of top-up credit value turning into a megabyte of data usage free of charge.

To understand what that means, watching a typical YouTube could use up from one to ten megabytes of data usage. 

RECENT INCREASE IN USING BANKS TO TOP UP MOBILE PHONES 

Sarut Vanichpun, vice-president for DTAC's pre-paid division, said its mobile phone top-ups via banking channels amounted to over 3 million transactions per month, with traffic still growing.

Competition in the local mobile market is set to remain fierce as the three major mobile operators continue using subsidy approaches to avoid losing market share.

Total Access Communications (DTAC) is ramping up its mass-marketing efforts with the introduction of free data offers as the country's second-largest mobile operator strives to retain its market share.

DTAC PLUNGE IN PROFIT

All mobile phone operators are struggling to deal with a sharp decline in revenue and profits last year.

DTAC recorded an 82% plunge in net profit in the fourth quarter of 2016 with 169 million baht, and a 74% drop from the third quarter.

Its 2016 net profit was 2.08 billion baht, down 64% from 5.89 billion in 2015.

DTAC posted consolidated revenue of 82.5 billion baht in 2016, a slight decline from 87.3 billion in 2015.

The company attributed the sharp profit decline this year to its handset subsidy campaign, coinciding with high depreciation costs for the 2G network and the high churn rate for prepaid customers.

DTAC said in a press release that it had declined to make a dividend payout for the second half of 2016 due to insufficient retained earnings.

FACTORS BEHIND DTAC'S POOR PERFORMANCE

A telecom analyst, who asked not to be named, said DTAC's poor performance was mainly due to four factors:

1. The 834 million baht in subsidies from its free handset campaign;

2. The loss of 548,000 prepaid customers in the last quarter of 2016 alone;

3. The cost of its 146-million-baht "staff optimisation programme" and...

4. The high depreciation costs for the 2G mobile network.

But the analyst said DTAC's postpaid revenue growth indicated the firm's 4G network, the subsidy and tariff strategies are bearing fruit.

DTAC CAMPAIGN TO REBUILD IMAGE

DTAC last month enlisted actress Patcharapa "Aum" Chaichuea as a presenter to promote its 4G wireless broadband network on its single-carrier network with 20MHz, the largest bandwidth in the country.

The company also aims to rebuild its image among customers regarding its service quality via a mass-marketing campaign.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/telecom/1191157/dtac-offers-top-up-data-usage-scheme

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