NEW DELHI, India-The slide in the Thai paging industry seen in 2000 is likely to continue during 2001, but operators hope to ride out the crisis by exploring value-added products and using their networks for the emerging business of call centers.
The market continues to have six players-including the ailing Worldpage, which was taken over by the government-controlled Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT) in December 2000-but the subscriber base is shrinking constantly. Industry leaders estimate the current number of subscribers to be between 800,000 to 900,000, down from 1.2 million at the end of 1999.
“The reasons are obvious for everybody to see-cheap mobile phones. PCT phones have emerged as strong competitors to the paging industry,” said Thakolrat Keokarn, managing director of Advanced Paging, the market leader that runs its services under the Phonelink brand. PCT phones are a limited-mobility offering integrating PHS technology and offered by TelecomAsia in the Bangkok metro area.
Thakolrat said despite the slide in the market, Phonelink has retained its leadership with 40 percent of the Thai paging market.
The paging companies are facing high churn rates-the proportion of monthly cancellations to total subscribers. The churn rate is currently estimated to be 3 percent to 5 percent compared with less than 1 percent during the boom years of the mid-1990s. Teen-agers, who normally accounted for the most new subscribes, are abandoning pagers for other devices.
The declining subscriber numbers have forced operators to offer value-added services like voice mail, GSM phone-to-pager direct links, and stock market and news updates. Some operators have launched promotions.
Samarat Paging, operating its services under the PosTel brand, has tied up with Siam Commercial Bank and Master Card International to provide a smart card to its subscribers with a low entry fee to widen its market base. The card is called the Super Gang Card, which can be used as a debit card and a discount card for PosTel subscribers. But the number of takers for such value-added services has remained low.
“The effort is to try and retain our existing customers through promotion campaigns, value-added services and features like e-mail dialer (where e-mail messages are sent to pagers) and news delivery,” said Thakolrat.
Because the main stream of revenues-monthly rentals-are fast disappearing, operators are actively exploring other avenues, such as call-center businesses. Call centers provide telephone information to customers of tele-marketing and fast-food delivery services, among others. Paging operators can use existing networks and personnel to provide customer relations services to corporations and the service industry, as it may not be viable to invest in a new project just for a call-center business.
Phonelink has formed Infolink to run a call-center business and expects annual revenue of 7 million baht to 10 million baht (US$162,000 to US$232,000) in 2000. Cybercall, a subsidiary of Paclink Thailand paging company, entered the market in early 2000 with projected revenues of 15 million baht (US$348,000) in the first year. Hutchison intends to use its call center unit to enter e-commerce.
Consolidation does not seem to be a possibility yet. This was clear from the Worldpage episode in 2000. Worldpage, the paging subsidiary of United Communication Industry (Ucom) and the smallest of the six operators, ran into financial troubles and closed its doors in August 2000. It had accumulated debt of more than 100 million baht (US$2.3 million) and also owed TOT 30 million baht (US$696,000).
Initially, bigger operators like Samarat offered to take over Worldpage’s license but later changed their minds. TOT has finally decided to take over and run the service through a marketing franchise to Bliss-Tel, a company owned 24 percent by Samarat that provided marketing services to Worldpage.
