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“They want to know how technology can facilitate their life,” Usman Sultan says, the chief executive officer of Tecom’s very own mobile subsidiary Du.
It’s a simple word pronounceable in any language, and Du is the second mobile operator in the UAE currently sharing its infrastructure with incumbent Etisalat, which already provides a mobile service in a market with over 100% penetration.
Sultan is upbeat for Du, expressing that in their adverts there will never be a phone or a computer because communication goes beyond that. These are magic words which the marketing people at former state telecoms corporation Maltacom and Go Mobile do well to emulate since it is also their shareholder’s battlecry of their majority shareholder.
On the other hand, they could give good advice to Du which is aiming at winning a 30% market share within the first three years of operation. Go Mobile, launched six years ago, has been the classical success story of a second telecommunications operator that increased the number of customers and reached nearly 50% of the local mobile market share competing against a worldwide operator.
Although Sultan has stated that Du’s mission is to “protect the highest interests” of its shareholders, it has experienced a bumpy ride in the stock market after offering 20% for public shareholding. The other 80% is shared between the government, Tecom, and Mubadala Development Company.
Du’s launch plans were revealed by its CEO Osman Sultan in the Arabian Business Weekly, where a major marketing launch started last Sunday, and customers are expected to start registering for the service by next week.
Du may choose to delay its launch until the beginning of next year, with Sultan saying the company will begin a major marketing campaign on November 19, and that the response of the market will then define the actual service launch date. “We will not announce an exact date yet. It will depend on the amount of possible customers and their requisitions.”
Those clients that want to port their old mobile number to Du will subsequently receive confirmation. Details of pricing and service launch date are not expected to appear before January next year. Although everything is nearly ready for the launch including products, services, human resources and network, Sultan is not mentioning a launch date.
Du, whose chairman is Ahmed Bin Bayat, was expected to launch its service by the year end. But sorting the “number issue”, as well as “the amount of possible customers and their requisites” are things that Du wants to finalise before announcing a launch date. It is also banking on an innovative per second billing against its competitor’s 30-second interval for billing of voice calls, as well as the mobile payment services it will provide to its customers.
The key issue for the company chaired by Ahmad Bin Bayat appears to be the granting of mobility of numbers, which requires significant logistical efforts. “According to market research the availability of preferred numbers, or the possibility to take an old number to a new provider, is one of the most important features for customers. In order to enable this we need to coordinate all options - and we need to have an approximate idea of the size of our future client pool. We cannot launch before we fully sort out this number issue,” Sultan explained.
Sultan will wait for the market’s response to set the agenda for Du’s massive task of winning over customers from an incumbent. Its extensive roaming facilities could be the winning trump card for this venture and the good news will hopefully lift the share price of the company. Something which local telecom investors are used to expect. |
