The Indian telecom sector has become fiercely competitive in the last few years. Many players began to operate in this sector in the last few years, thanks to the opportunities offered by it. This phenomenon has also forced the sector to learn the best marketing and advertising strategies. This article talks about the latest marketing practices adopted by the players in this sector. It also suggests certain strategies that the players could adopt to become more competitive and successful.

Marketing consultants always suggest that a new industry has to define its quality parameters and establish its own quality standards. Through various advertisements and other communication tools, firms in the industry should encourage customers to weigh the quality of various alternatives available in the market. Telecom services have quality parameters, like coverage to the maximum possible geographic regions of the country, uninterrupted connectivity in offices, drawing rooms, lift, terrace or any corner of the house or workplace and clarity of the voice transmitted. Airtel, the pioneer company in private cellular telephony, used various advertisements to highlight the quality features of its connectivity in various television advertisements. One TV ad shows a couple caught in a jungle after their plane crashes. The boy tries to contact the Air Traffic Control, while the girl uses her cell phone having an Airtel connection. Here, the boy fails in receiving any message from the Air Traffic Control, while the girl is able to reach her father, thanks to the Airtel services. In this ad, Airtel wanted to highlight its features of greater coverage and superior connectivity compared to the Air Traffic Control system. After the success of that campaign, almost every new entrant in this sector followed the similar strategy of conveying the features of superior voice clarity, coverage and connectivity in their services. Such kinds of advertisements have guided customers in judging the quality of any telecom service.

According to many experts, the rule of thumb to beat any competition is to cut the price of one's products/services in order to enter into fresh untapped markets or to swallow the competitor's market share. Cellular telephony is following a mixed revenue model for its prepaid and postpaid services. In prepaid services, a customer can purchase the talktime by paying money in advance, while in postpaid, he or she can pay the money on any fixed date of the month for the usage of the previous month. To penetrate deeper into the markets and to increase their market shares, all the telecom players have started slashing the entry charges of fixed rental per month and are also introducing the concept of one-time payment for lifetime membership validity. Reliance Telecommunication pioneered the pricing wars and has been regularly introducing such schemes. All the other players have followed the trend and are highlighting their low-cost services in all the TV/print ads. Apart from the local call charges, customer also has to pay for STD calls, roaming fees and SMS cost. In order to grab a greater market share, almost all private players are advertising on the basis of price reduction. Reliance has introduced a plan, where a customer will be charged 50 paisa/minute for any STD or local call, as well as for any SMS. Tata Teleservices has also introduced innovative pricing schemes, like pay per character in SMS services and pay less than 1 paisa/minute whether it is STD or local call in voice call segment. Idea Cellular, Aircel Mobile Services, Vodafone have also followed the same trend to acquire the first time user market or to grab the competitor's market by playing the low price and lifetime membership card.

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