by Jason Njoku
NCC have decided to promote competition in Nigeria. Just in a very Nigerian way. At the expense of customers, macro economics and reality. Voice and SMS revenue will, and is, disappearing. Fast. Regulation can’t/won’t change that. We are in a new age. Everyone is climbing over the top. Whatsapp/Facebook/Messenger/SnapChat/Instagram are the new norms for communications. Netflix, ShowMax and irokotv will be the new norms for the hundreds of millions who are not in the PayTV universe.
Europe, India and the US have seen the future and the regulators are supporting this new reality.
Free Mobile sparks Telecoms war in France (FT)
Xavier Niel, the French billionaire, has embarked on an aggressive price war against France Telecom, Vivendi’s SFR and Bouygues Telecom to try to break their stranglehold over one of Europe’s most expensive mobile phone markets.
At an event in Paris to launch his Free Mobile service that drew inspiration from the late Steve Jobs at Apple — with its cheering geeks and a promise to “liberate” the French consumer — the founder of Free Telecom announced a pricing strategy that he claimed would undercut the incumbents.
Mr Niel had promised to halve French mobile phone bills by entering the market. On Tuesday, he said Free would charge €19.99 a month for a service with unlimited texts, domestic calls and data and free calls to 40 countries in Europe and North America. This compares with €49.40 for a similar offer atFrance Telecom’s new low-cost service, SoSh.
When I first started visiting France in 2012, a young hyper aggressive new entrant called Free Mobile was bruising the decades-long incumbents and exciting the customers. Xavier Niel and his vehicle Iliad (worth €10.46B on the Euronext) changed the game. In response, Orange, SFR and others had to cut their prices >60% to stay in the game. Customers won. See the customer growth of Free mobile below.
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