NETONE

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NetOne FOR ALL

As NetOne continues to rollout broadband services across Zimbabwe, South Africa Magazine talks to managing director Reward Kangai. By Ian Armitage

overnment-owned mobile telecommunications company NetOne is on a voyage of transformation. It claimed around 16 percent of Zimbabwes 9.8 million mobile users at the end of March 2012, according to TeleGeographys GlobalComms Database, and has the largest network coverage nationally, but has suffered from poor infrastructure investment and maintenance. It has had a hard time. But it is determined to improve. And it has started with its broadband services says NetOne managing director Reward Kangai. Its services are currently available in all Matabeleland provinces, Midlands, Masvingo and parts of Harare. Efforts are underway to expand coverage and improve 3G services using a $45 million
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loan secured from the China Export and Import bank. The 3G expansion is countrywide, says Kangai. We are trying to get as many customers as possible to connect to the web through both our 3G and GPRS/EDGE networks. Thats the current effort. We started in the west and are moving east, connecting people as we go. A substantial portion has already been connected to the 3G networks. It is part of our exercise to provide internet access across the whole country and to support the programme we have leased very high capacity bandwidth from the six network providers accessing the EASSy cable system and we are also hoping to hook up to the WACS cable. He says improved Internet access is vital to Zimbabwes future. It is fundamental for the economy, for social mobility, for growth, Kangai explains. Thats why were making sure this is countrywide and not just in populated areas or tourist hotspots. This is about the rural communities too. NetOne is certainly heading down the right path. But this isnt the only improvement. Work too has centred on improving the customer experience and an investment has been made into a new billing system. We do have a new billing system we are rolling out and it comes from a Finish IT firm called Tecnotree. Why have we made the investment? To improve billing. To improve the customer experience. To ultimately win back market share that we have lost in recent years. We have to have a fair way of charging our customers. Were not just providing voice and SMS services but Internet content and we have to change with the times and reflect that fact. Those services require a different billing architecture, a solid architecture and so we purchased a convergent customer care and billing system for our pre-paid and post-paid operations. The new system is expected to be installed by year-end. It is a transparent
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It is fundamental for the economy, for social mobility, for growth

and appropriate billing system and certainly an upgrade on existing systems that are no longer adequate in terms of our expansion. The Tecnotree solution has been tailored to NetOnes unique requirements. As we look to cover more of the country and offer services to more people, we have to improve and this is an important step forward in that respect, Kangai says. We have no doubt that itll help improve our competitive advantage as we reach out to every Zimbabwean and enrich their lives. In a bid to improve further still Kangai says the firm is looking for investment from abroad. We are on the hunt for a strategic partner to help turn around our fortunes. We have had quite a lot of interest from various companies who

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want to partner with us and have worked to resolve several issues to make us a more attractive proposition. That said I think there is also a realisation of the strategic importance of NetOne and Zimbabwe will certainly benefit. NetOne has been an actively engaging with financial institutions to come up with a debt clearance strategy. According to Kangai, the company has defaulted on some loans since 2002. It was inherited from first unbundling of the then Posts and Telecommunications Company, which NetOne was part of, and then to aid the company in its development soon after inception. He says NetOne is in talks with the foreign lenders to find ways to retire or at least reduce the debt.
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We are on the hunt for a strategic partner to help turn around our fortunes. We have had quite a lot of interest from various companies who want to partner with us and have worked to resolve several issues to make us a more attractive proposition

We are negotiating. And not only that - we are trying in all we do to maximise all possible economies of scale to strengthen our business. Remember the telecoms industry is capital intensive and we need a strategic partner in order to get the funding to gain the necessary economies of scale. From a user perspective, the kind of partnership that we are contemplating will give them a much broader reach in terms of services, not just within Zimbabwe but across the African continent and beyond. Those services can only be obtained from the kind of strategic partnership we are looking for. NetOne has an estimated 1.6 million subscribers and is Zimbabwes third largest mobile operator behind Econet Wireless and Telecel. NetOne, formed in 1996, is the countrys first mobile operator. END To learn more visit www.netone.co.zw.
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Driving customer loyalty across Africa

By Ed De Clercq, Regional Director, Convergys
The African mobile phone market remains ercely competitive. Retaining customers has never been more crucial for African operators. This means that wireless operator price wars across Africa are becoming increasingly commona battle that, according to the GSMA, has seen prices decrease by 18% between 2010 and 2011. Prices cant get much lower. Wireless operators are therefore looking for innovative ways to build market share. This includes trying to nd ways to build loyalty in an increasingly impulsive consumer market. No such thing as customer loyalty in Africa, a prepaid market According to a report released by industry analysts, Strategy Analytics in April 2012, globally, the average mobile customer switches service provider every 27 months, more than twice as frequently as a decade ago. The same analyst rm also revealed that global mobile customer churn reached a staggering 44% at the end of 2011its highest ever level. While this appears to be a worrying trend facing wireless operators, it gets a great deal worse for African service providers. Prepaid has been key to the growth of mobile telephony in Africa, with approximately 96% of all subscriptions sold. Wireless operators realise that retaining these customers is more important than ever. According to Strategy Analytics, average prepaid customer lifetimes have halved over the last ve years to just 17 months. Customer loyalty solutionsautomating the process There has been a surge in demand across Africa for technology solutions that can provide loyalty-enhancing capabilities, and more recently in real-time. This technology enables service providers to translate customer information into action and create targeted interactions with subscribers. This empowers operators to build meaningful, ongoing relationships that are personalised with timely communication regarding relevant offers, rewards and service activations. In the battle for increased market share and service revenues in spite of such strong competition, African operators need the ability to not only implement their own real time loyalty generating offers, but also react to competitive offers from rivals in real-time to minimise their impact on their existing customer base and prevent churn. These offers can vary according to the subscriber in question but can often include making additional new services available to specic subscribers, reductions in tariffs, additional credit, enhanced voice and SMS packages or discretionary below-the-line offers. A valuable inevitability Customer loyalty solutions will be instrumental in putting the brakes on customer churn, and on increasing operators average wallet share with existing customers. The technology gives mobile operators the exibility to react in real time to changing market conditions with targeted offers aimed at specic groups of users, or down to the individual user based on real time usage. On an outbound basis, it also enables operators to reach millions of customers per campaign and monitor user trends in terms of their propensity to accept or decline these offers. This includes any subsequent follow-up promotions to specic customers. Customer loyalty solutions are a cost-effective, measurable means to actively reduce churn and grow incremental revenues worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Given the current market climate and competitive trends in Africa, mobile operators will surely deem this technology to be a valuable inevitability. As a leader in customer management for over 30 years, Convergys is uniquely focused on helping companies nd new ways to enhance the value of their customer relationships and deliver consistent customer experiences across all channels and geographies. Every day, our nearly 75,000 employees help our clients balance the demands of increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction, and reducing overall cost using an optimal mix of agent, technology, and analytics solutions. Our actionable insight stems from handling billions of customer interactions annually for our clients. Visit www.convergys.com to learn more.

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