We’re looking beyond the clichéd operator business models

—Sandeep Yadav

Head, Data & Voice Business Line, MTS India

The traditional telecom VAS revenues continue to be under pressure from OTT apps. Which of the VAS genres you think would remain unaffected in the long run?

OTT apps, specifically Instant Messaging apps have been affecting the SMS revenue. However, considering the low mobile data penetration in rural areas and Tier II and Tier III cities, value added services like CRBT, Voice alerts, Music streaming, Sports updates and Missed call alerts would remain largely unaffected and would be an opportunity.

In the short and medium term, telcos are looking to partner with OTT to monetize usage and/or build stickiness around the services. For example, we provide Viber and Skype as part of our offerings in certain demographics which makes a lot of international calls. This is a pre-emptive manner to minimize losses due to OTT services while maintaining a consistent data experience.

Do you see new VAS innovations changing things again in the favour of telcos? What are some of the key challenges to such innovations?

VAS innovations definitely have the potential to swing things back in favour of telcos. In today’s technology-hungry world, innovation comes in many forms and serves to improve many lives; including those of telcos. Telcos today are partnering with experts who implement their Value Added Services strategy at low cost with fast go-to-market results. An example of this, would be MTS Movies where we facilitate access to exclusive content and encourage viewing of short movies (10-12 minutes) free of cost and earn out of the additional minutes of usage.

The challenges to such innovations are lack of local language content and user awareness, especially in India. Another challenge is to look beyond the established and clichéd business operator business models. As broadband and internet matures, telcos need to look at defining more engagement and discovery based monetization models. Also, non-voice services continue to be perceived as an entertainment medium only, though huge opportunities exist in other sectors such as health, education, banking, commerce and gaming.

What are the steps you are taking to stay competitive in a new market dynamics?

MTS India is entering into tie-ups with D2C apps and Direct Carrier Billing platforms to add to the new revenue streams. Partnerships are being explored for the innovations in line with industry trends. We have also launched innovative services like M Buddy which is an instant messaging app for feature phone users that runs on BREW platform.

MTS is also engaged in creating Mlife- An intelligent future ready analytics and intelligent platform gateways that analyze traffic and user-destination. Such platforms analyze and predict user behavior and allow users to customize services and content. As usage and the minutes of usage on this platform matures, it is capable of predicting user behavior more holistically. The capability to serve customized content in relevant context with a rich user experience is the key to build the virtuous cycle of usage, revenue and intelligence.