More data use means giving the customers what they want. Circles.Life wants to show the big boys how to do it. By S. Sakthivel
“The old world run by the old guard is on the way out,” says Rameez Ansar, Co-founder and Director of new mobile virtual network operator Circles.Life.
He jokes that effecting change to current business practices and services in the Telco market is akin to steering an elephant — it’s going nowhere fast. With regulators not ready to embrace change, vendors entrenched in the old ways, and service providers unable to drastically change the services delivered to the customer; Ansar feels that the market as a whole is due for a revamp.
This inaction from current players, however, has presented Ansar with an opportunity to enter the market with Circles.Life. By identifying the consumers’ key dissatisfactions with current mobile offerings — low data allowances, rigid mobile plans, and poor customer service — and addressing them with his own, he believes that he can carve out a niche in the market.
Over the top technology, like Whatsapp for example, have decimated the traditional revenue streams from SMS and IDD calls. Data shows that more and more consumers are using similar apps for chatting, overseas calls and increasingly, even for local calls. Ansar declares that if service providers don’t evolve, to keep up with the accelerated rate of change in the market in the last five years, they will quickly be left behind in the next five.
He estimates that the 15-20% of the market that is currently represented by the “data-centric and data savvy customer” will soon expand to 80% in coming years. It has therefore become imperative for all players to look for ways to better serve them.
Ansar tells us more about the challenges in the Telco industry and the efforts he has taken to remain relevant.
Rameez Ansar is a panellist at STORM magazine’s upcoming event, Keep It Going 2016, which brings together leaders and decision makers from various industries who talk about Protecting Against Headwinds.
