The recent case of Airtel asking its VoIP users to pay extra for the internet telephony

Telecom operators around the globe are disturbed with the emergence of OTT players, and more so with their increasing popularity. Worse, the telcos are threatened that the OTTs are eating a great chunk of their existing revenue pie. But the worst was about to come, and it came and how! Customers now want to dump their telcos for OTTs.

A recent survey by Amdocs said that around 31% users in India are ready to switch to Over The Top operators(OTT) and dump their existing telcos, if the OTTs start offering mobile connectivity. The Indian trend is much worse than their global counterparts. On a global scale, around 20% users want to switch to OTTs from their telecom service providers.

This tells volumes about the user behaviour and rings a warning bell around the traditional telcos.

This was revealed in the report called, the Amdocs Customer Experience Spotlight 2015, an independent research study conducted by IE Market Research (IEMR) on behalf of Amdocs. It highlights the importance of providing a superior customer experience in order to retain as well as attract new customers, such as including a carrier-grade Wi-Fi strategy to combat the threat of emerging players in the mobile market and offering multi-play bundles to win market share.

The report that explores the market forces driving The New World of Customer Experience also suggests that 94% of customers would recommend their service providers to friends and family if they experience great customer care, and 62% would recommend if quality internet coverage is there and 86% would go for competitive pricing.

Over the past one year or so, telcos around the globe are shouting, screaming, complaining and crying over the emergence as well as the ever-increasing prominence of the Over-the-Top (OTT) service providers like Skype, Lync, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Viber etc. The recent case of Airtel asking its VoIP users to pay extra for the internet telephony, perhaps, is the first documented cry by an Indian operator over the issue.

Source : TeleAnaiysis