'Users want control over data usage'

THE Brunei market has high potential for "Smart Prepaid" plans as users become increasingly concerned about choice, cost effectiveness, and degree of control over content, an Ericsson official said.

Calvin Yeo, a senior consultant for Ericsson Singapore and Brunei, said that customers in the Sultanate want control on how they are charged for data while retaining the convenience of the ability to top up to continue using services.

Yeo, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the LTE Asia forum at Marina Bay Sands here yesterday, pointed out that Brunei has a largely prepaid segment, and that the mindset of users is to buy services in byte sizes rather than in big chunks.

"They do this for cost control and they want it to be convenient to top up, so the services we are talking about here is to take one particular service where users have, and bundle it with data and offer it to users for what they want to do," said Yeo.

"From what we understand, amongst smartphone users in Brunei, the top two things they like to do is social networking and video streaming."

With the mentality of having "smart offerings" for smartphones in mind, operators need to ride the wave or trend, said Yeo, to offer things like just a Facebook day pass or Facebook week pass which will allow users to have more control over data usage.

"It will make it easy to understand for the user, and they will have the peace of mind to use their smartphones (with the cost control mechanism), which will be more appealing. The same can be done for video streaming," said Yeo.

If a dashboard is introduced to show that usage is consumed in terms of how much time is left as not all users may understand the terms 'gigabytes' or 'megabytes' they won't have to worry so much about going over their data usage limit, he added.

Warren Chaisatien, Ericsson Australia's strategic marketing manager, said that this is where the "one-trick pony" approach comes in to play, where the operator is pushing to be good at one thing only.

"We have found a few key trends in Brunei, and the rest of Asia, where 90 per cent of the mobile users are typically prepaid. And now, with entry-level smartphones price at US$100 and below, it's sort of a sweet spot for everyone, especially prepaid users to be able to afford it," he said.

Chaisatien who presented a talk on "Profitable Prepaid Smartphones", said the majority of users in emerging markets use smartphone mainly for two things: social networking (66 per cent) and Internet browsing (54 per cent).

"As mentioned earlier, emerging markets can't afford a $30 or $40 plan and they don't need it. They just want to connect to Facebook, chat with friends and of course watch one or two episodes on YouTube," he said.

This is where the key message of "one size doesn't fit all" comes in there is now a need to differentiate plans to suit the needs of emerging markets.

"With a one-trick pony approach, operators can offer easily digestible packages with specific use. It encourages more data amongst existing smartphone owners and have the tendency to stimulate new smartphone take-ups as well," he said.

As smartphone users in this region tend to use prepaid plans, he said that operators need to offer a mechanism or interface that allows users to top up easily; time-based passes (for example, two-hours of unlimited YouTube streaming); and the option of boosters.

"Maybe if you want to buy a 24-hour access to YouTube, the operator can offer a package with a HD pack if you pay a little bit more. This is the opportunity to upsell, or for example, you could offer gamers a low-latency booster."

However, the three conceptual packages are to be mutually exclusive or can be complimentary to be offered at the same time, he said.

"Operators can then use this service to promote others. Example, if you run out of data, you buy another high-speed booster, the operator offer a free trial of voice over IP (VOIP) to stimulate a new take-up."

Chaisatien listed a three-step approach that can be applied to Brunei for operators to successfully deploy smart networks: networks must be smartphone ready; leverage policy control; and end-to-end smart network implementation.

"Users in emerging markets (based on a study on Indonesia) have two main concerns, which is network speed and network quality. Our qualitative interviews show that users are also willing to pay 20 to 25 per cent more if operators can double network speeds," he said.

With regards to policy control, Chaisatien said that most operators, if not all in Southeast Asia, would have some sort of policy control within networks which they use to throttle users speeds when they go beyond the data plan.

"If I run out of data with 10 days left in the month, all I want as a consumer is for the next cycle to start immediately because I can't go for the rest of the month with a slow connection. So I want to give money to the operators to open the pipe, and I am willing to, but the problem is, the operator has no mechanism to collect my money.

"If the operators can deploy and implement smart offerings, it will give a better user experience, more satisfaction and improve output a win-win situation," he said.The Brunei Times