Contrary to what many equipment developers proclaim, Hans Snook, chief executive officer of U.K.-based cell phone operator Orange, says that things were not simpler in 1995. He claims that it was not easy to build the networks or sell the handset and voice service, and it wasn’t easy for the consumer to understand the technology.
But, regardless of these difficulties, Snook has firm views on what has and will continue to build the cell phone business. He bluntly states that prepaid, while bringing tremendous short-term growth, has not helped the industry.
“It’s just the same `low-life’ tariffs of ’92 and ’93, and it’s the most expensive way for a consumer to use a cell phone,” said Snook. “Customer service is very bad. We’re not happy with our own, but we’re better than the other operators.”
Snook also maintained that prepaid does not educate the customer and, without concern for ruffling feathers, said that the large supermarket outlets care nothing for what happens to the prepaid customers who purchase the product in their stores.
Looking to the future, Snook said that, while there are a lot of pitfalls with prepaid, Orange intends to push ahead with the concept by adding a lot more value and providing customers with more options.
Adopting value-added services is high on Snook’s list of business objectives because he believes staying purely a carrier is death.
“Where do we generate revenues in the future?” he questioned. “Partly out of subscriptions, airtime, e-commerce transaction splits, and maybe the content-service firms will want to pay us to be in our database that customers can access.
“You can extrapolate this a long way: Are we still in the operator business? Yes. Do we know a lot more about the customer? Yes. Does the customer depend more on us? Yes, with the result that our overall revenue base increases.”
Paul Rasmussen in Oxford, United Kingdom
