a study on telecomunication industry.doc

7/29/2019 A Study on telecomunication industry.doc

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Term Paper

of

Economics

Course Code-MKT-507

Submitted by :

Name & Particular Roll Number

1

Submitted to :

Md. Abdullah Al Jamil

LecturerDepartment of Marketing

Comilla University


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1 SYED KHALID BIN NAZRUL 12010718

2 DELOWAR HOSSAIN 12010723

3 Mohammad Shaparan 12010728

4 Alamgir Zaman 12010736

5 Tithi Chakra Borty 120107426 Abu Hanif Md. Shohel 12010743

Department of MarketingEMBA 2nd semester,Comilla University.

A Study on Telecommunication Industry

Policy, procedure and Output

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INTRODUCTION

Communications is now the business phenomena in an Economic and Social system

all over the world. Digital communications is the part & parcel of modern business.

Communications over the phone is backed by enormous telecom industries. Telecom

industries in Bangladesh are very first and rapidly growing to meet the 21st centuries

goal. The Bangladesh telecommunications market is severely underserved. The

extremely high poorest fixed lines network, provide a strong indicator of the potential

demand for telecommunications, especially in the rural areas. When comparing

Bangladeshi's level of income and its tele-density with other countries, it is clear that

the country's telecommunications services have been neglected. Furthermore, out of

the 500,000 fixed phone lines (350,000 considered operational) that are installed,80% of the lines are in the country's two largest cities, Dhaka and Chittagong. In fact,

two thirds of all fixed lines in Bangladesh are in Dhaka, where less than a tenth of the

population lives. population density, accompanied by the fact that Bangladesh has

the one of the world's in a country such for poor countries and rural areas, it is

cheaper to build mobile infrastructure than fixed line communications. In terms of

topography, Bangladesh is a flat country where 90% of the country is dominated by

alluvial river plains, which does not raise more than 10 meters above sea level. The

highest peak is Keokradang (1230m), 80 km southwest of Chittagong in the Hill

Tracts. The flatness facilitates the construction of base stations and improves its

coverage area. Besides reviewing the macro indicators to identify potential demand,consumer demand for cellular services has also been studied.

Company overflow

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To understand the potential demand for telecommunications services in Bangladesh,

let us look at some of the key macro-indicators of the country. With a population of

nearly 150 million people living in an area slightly larger than the United Kingdom,

Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world, with roughly 980

people per square kilometer. More than 80% of its population lives in the rural areas,where two thirds of the population is engaged in agricultural activities. Its standing in

the Human Development Index (HDI) remains almost unchanged at 132nd position,

according to the United Nations Development Report released last year.

In a country such as Bangladesh where the state-owned operator, the Bangladesh

Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), dominates the landline telephone system

and provides poor services and infrastructure, cellular phones tend to be substitute

for landlines. The mobile phone operations decisions were never being influenced by

any International agreement but held up as an independent entity for making

marketto grow. Self learning and liberalizing the mobile phone sector shaped up in

asequential strategy for Bangladesh. From 1993 till 1996 the mobile phoneservices

were monopolized by one company; Pacific BangladeshTelecom Ltd.which didnt let

the customer benefitted, however, with the commissioning of mobile phone service

by Grameen Phone Limited and Aktel in 1997, the situationstarted to improve in

terms of price reduction and quality. The later period could be said Grameen phone

Ltd. golden period, but the arrival of Banglalink in 2005. The mobile phone market

brought immense price competition. The intensity of competition came as a blessing

for the customers. This change intrend forced every player to adjust their price policy

and quality.

* A case Study About Citycell

Citycell (Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited) is Bangladeshs pioneering mobile

communications company and the only CDMA mobile operator in the country. Citycell

is a customer-driven organization whose mission is to deliver the latest in advanced

telecommunication services to Bangladesh.

The company offers a full array of fixed and mobile services for consumers and

businesses that are focused on the unique needs of the Bangladeshi community.

Citycells growth strategy is to integrate superior customer service, highest standard

technology and choice of packages at affordable rates.

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The company operates a 24-hour call centre with well trained operators to respond to

customer queries. Citycells customer services are open 7 days a week to ensure

customers can access Citycell at any convenient time.

Citycell is focused on innovation and creating new ways for customers to stay in

touch and to do business. Citycell is offering a wide range of competitive pre-paidand post-paid mobile packages as well as Value Added Services such as SMS and

information based services.

Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd.(PBTL) is the first mobile phone service provider in

the Indian subcontinent and launched its mobile operations in 1993 using the name

Citycell. The mobile operator is a member of the Pacific Group, one of the largest

privately-owned business groups in Bangladesh. It is one of the five mobile service

operators in the country and operates a nation-wide Code Division Multiple Access

(CDMA) system.

Most recently Singapore Telecom Limited (SingTel), South East Asias largest mobile

phone company, entered Bangladeshs mobile market. Expanding further its reach in

South Asia as per its overseas expansion strategy, SingTel invested US$118 million

for a 45 percent stake in PBTL (Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd), more popularly

known as Citycell. As part of the deal, SingTel also has the option to increase its

stake in the company to 60 percent foe additional US$65million between April 2007

and June 2007.

POLICYOFTHETELECOMMUNICATIONINDUSTRY

HOW CELL PHONES WORK

Cellular telephones have revolutionized the communications arena, redefining how

we perceive voice communications. Traditionally, cellular phones remained out of the

hands of most consumers due to their high cost. As a result, cell phone carriers have

invested time and resources into finding ways to give the systems higher capacity

and thus lower cost. Cell systems are benefiting from this research and starting to

develop into large-scale consumer products. Today, cellular phones are truly

consumer electronics devices with over 580 million subscribers. The Nokia Bowl and

Qualcomm Stadium are further evidence of the idea that cell phones are consumer

electronics devices. Since cell phones have ceased to be an exclusive status symbol

of high-powered lawyers and are now in the hands of millions of consumers, they are

now incredibly cost sensitive. Specifically, it is not the cost of the device that counts,

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but the cost of using the device. As a result, the cellular phone infrastructure is being

optimized to allow calls to be placed as inexpensively and reliably as possible. Today,

more than ever, cellular companies are looking for ways to bring down the call cost to

attain even higher market penetration, especially in metropolitan areas. It is common

knowledge that Cellular Phones are wireless phones; however, many are confusedabout how a cell phone actually works. Essentially, cell phones use high-frequency

radio signals to communicate with "cell towers" located throughout the calling area.

Cell phones communicate in the frequency range of 806-890 MHz and 1850-1990

MHz. When the user wants to make a call, the cell phone sends a message to the

tower, asking to be connected to a given telephone number. If the tower has

sufficient resources to grant the request, a device called a "switch" patches the cell

phones signal throughout to a channel on the "public switched telephone network"

(otherwise known as the PSTN). This call now takes up a wireless channel as well as a

PSTN channel that will be held open until the call is completed. The figure on the

right side illustrates this process. This channel cannot be used for anyone elses call

until the cell phone call is discontinued. Given this simple description of how cell

phones work, we will add technical details about various facets of cell phone systems

throughout the remainder of this section. As the name implies, cell phone systems

are made up of many small "cells." Each cell in a cell phone system represents the

area served by one cell phone tower. The concept of cells is the key behind the

success of cell phones because by spacing many cells fairly close to each other, the

cell phones may broadcast at very low power levels (typically 200mw1W, depending

on system). Since the cell phones may broadcast at low power levels, they use small

transmitters and small batteries, and thus are able to fit in a shirt pocket, unlike

amateur radios which can occupy a tabletop. Cells are typically spaced around 1-2

miles apart but can be spaced up to 20 miles apart in rural areas. In loaded areas or

areas with many obstacles (such as tall buildings), the cell sites may be spaced

closer together. Some technologies, like PCS (Personal communication System),

require closer cell spacing due to their higher frequency and lower power operation.

Additionally, buildings interfere with cell signals coming from outside, so many

buildings have their own "microcell." The Kingdome and New York subway are two

examples of where microcells are used. Microcells may also be used to increase

overall capacity within a heavily populated area such as a citys core downtown area.

In fact, homes may have "picocells" connected to the homes PSTN connection to

allow the cell phone to be used as a cordless phone. An example of typical microcell

and picocell environments is pictured in the following figure.

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With thousands of cellular phone calls going on at any given time within a city, it

certainly would not work for everyone to talk on the same channel at once (as in CB

and short-wave radios). Therefore, several different techniques were developed by

cell phone manufacturers to split up the available bandwidth into many channels

each capable of supporting one conversation. The following sections will discuss eachtechnology and how it works.

FDMA: FDMA stands for "Frequency Division Multiple Access". Though it could be

used for digital systems, is exclusively used on all analog cellular systems.

Essentially, FDMA splits the allocated spectrum into many channels. In current analog

cell systems, each channel is 30 kHz. When a FDMA cell phone establishes a call, it

reserves the frequency channel for the entire duration of the call. The voice data is

modulated into this channels frequency band (using frequency modulation) and sent

over the airwaves. At the receiver, the information is recovered using a band-pass

filter. The phone uses a common digital control channel to acquire channels. FDMA

systems are the least efficient cellular system since each analog channel can only be

used by one user at a time. Not only are these channels larger than necessary given

modern digital voice compression, but they are also wasted whenever there is silence

during the cell phone conversation. Analog signals are also especially susceptible to

noise and there is no way to filter it out. Given the nature of the signal, analog cell

phones must use higher power (between 1 and 3 watts) to get acceptable call

quality. Given these shortcomings, it is easy to see why FDMA is being replaced by

newer digital techniques.

TDMA: TDMA stands for "Time Division Multiple Access." TDMA builds on FDMA by

dividing conversations by frequency and time. Since digital compression allows voice

to be sent at well under 10 kilobits per second (equivalent to 10 kHz), TDMA fits three

digital conversations into a FDMA channel (which is 30 kHz) By sampling a persons

voice for, say 30 milliseconds, then transmitting it in 10 milliseconds; the system is

able to offer 3 timeslots per channel in a round-robin fashion. This technique allows

compatibility with FDMA while enabling digital services and easily boosting system

capacity by three times. While TDMA is a good digital system, it is still somewhat

inefficient since it has no flexibility for varying digital data rates (high quality voice,

low quality voice, pager traffic) and has no accommodations for silence in a

telephone conversation. In other words, once a call is initiated, the channel/timeslot

pair belongs to the phone for the duration of the call. TDMA also requires strict

signaling and timeslot synchronization. A digital control channel provides

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synchronization functionality as well as adding voice mail and message notification.

Due to the digital signal, TDMA phones need only broadcast at 600 miliwatts.

CDMA: CDMA stands for "Code Division Multiple Access" and is both the most

interesting and the hardest to implement multiplexing method. CDMA has beenlikened to a party: When everyone talks at once, no one can be understood, however,

if everyone speaks a different language, then they can be understood. CDMA

systems have no channels, but instead encode each call as a coded sequence across

the entire frequency spectrum. Each conversation is modulated, in the digital

domain, with a unique code (called a pseudo-noise code) that makes it

distinguishable from the other calls in the frequency spectrum. Using a correlation

calculation and the code the call was encoded with, the digital audio signal can be

extracted from the other signals being broadcast by other phones on the network.

From the perspective of one call, upon extracting the signal, everything else appears

to be low-level noise. As long as there is sufficient separation between the codes

(said to be mutually orthogonal), the noise level will be low enough to recover the

digital signal. Each signal is not, in fact, spread across the whole spectrum (12.5 MHz

for traditional cellular or 60 MHz in PCS cellular), but is spread across 1.25 MHz "pass-

bands." CDMA systems are the latest technology on the market and are already

eclipsing TDMA in terms of cost and call quality. Since CDMA offers far greater

capacity and variable data rates depending on the audio activity, many more users

can be fit into a given frequency spectrum and higher audio quality can be provide.

The current CDMA systems boast at least three times the capacity of TDMA and GSM

systems. The fact that CDMA shares frequencies with neighboring cell towers allows

for easier installation of extra capacity, since extra capacity can be achieved by

simply adding extra cell sites and shrinking power levels of nearby sites. CDMA

technology also allows lower cell phone power levels (200 miliwatts) since the

modulation techniques expect to deal with noise and are well suited to weaker

signals. The downside to CDMA is the complexity of deciphering and extracting the

received signals, especially if there are multiple signal paths (reflections) between

the phone and the cell tower (called multi path interference). As a result, CDMA

phones are twice as expensive as TDMA phones and CDMA cell site equipment is 3-4

times the price of TDMA equivalents.

GSM: GSM stands for "Global System for Mobile Communications." GSM is mostly a

European system and is largely unused in the US. GSM is interesting in that it uses a

modified and far more efficient version of TDMA. GSM keeps the idea of timeslots and

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frequency channels, but corrects several major shortcomings. Since the GSM

timeslots are smaller than TDMA, they hold less data but allow for data rates starting

at 300 bits per second. Thus, a call can use as many timeslots as necessary up to a

limit of 13 kilobits per second. When a call is inactive (silence) or may be compressed

more, fewer timeslots are used. To facilitate filling in gaps left by unused timeslots,calls do "frequency hopping" in GSM. This means that calls will jump between

channels and timeslots to maximize the systems usage. A control channel is used to

communicate the frequency hopping and other information between the cell tower

and the phone. To compare with the other systems, it should be noted that GSM

requires 1 Watt of output power from the phone.

PROCEDUREOFTHEINDUSTRY

(FUNCTIONSOF DIFFERENTDEPARTMENTS)

UPPER ORGANIZATIONAL HIERARCHY

MARKETING DEPARTMENT

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Chairma

n

Vice

Chairma

n

ChiefMarketing

Officer

ChiefCommercial

Officer

ChiefFinancial

Officer

Chief of

CustomerCare

Chief

Technical

Officer

Director-HR & Admin.

CEO


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SALES DEPARTMENT

CUSTOMER CARE DEPARTMENT

FINANCE & ACCOUNTS DEPARTMENT

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convinced to upgrade their packages to the new ones on offer. The company sub-

contracts its promotional materials production to local companies. A regular number

of events are held to integrate promotional activities with public relation exercises to

enhance the image of Citycell and better promote the packages on offer.

Product Design:

This division is responsible for the design of packages and the fixing of tariff rates,

which are actually the rates of usage for each package. This department is also

responsible for the coordination of market research for the whole company. They will

integrate knowledge gleaned from extensive market research into the design of new

packages that fulfills the needs of customers. This is done very frequently as the

needs of even the most stable of customer segments change and the company has

to change the tariff structure of its offered packages accordingly.

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Sales Department:

Selling product & services is the primarygoal of this department.

Corporate and Direct Sales:This Division is responsible for corporate customer relations. Corporate customers

are given high priority in terms of sales and also in terms of after sales service. Of

course this is due to the high usage and need for good long term goodwill with such

corporate clients. This department however deals mainly with sales to corporate

customers and maintenance of relations with both current clients as well as scouting

out potential new corporate clients, whereas the after sales service and other issues

are dealt with by the customer services operations section of the company. This

division also controls selling product to the general customers. This division is also

responsible for direct face-to-face inquiry by the general people who every day visit

the Head Office.

Channel Management:

This division is responsible for channel management has the very important job of

setting up marketing channels by which packages are distributed among clients and

by which feedback is obtained from customers. This department is responsible for the

selection of new dealers and motivating them and current dealers to promote Citycell

packages to their customers in their respective areas. This department is also

responsible for seeing that there is an excellent support network for each dealer and

that they are satisfied with their monetary or otherwise remuneration. Each dealer is

a business partner and not a surrogate arm of the company. They are given the

marketing tools to act as if they were branches of Citycell in their respective areas.

This department is also responsible for checking that each dealer does not cut into

the sales of another dealer in a very proximal region.

Customer Care Department:

This department is responsible for coordinating all customer support activities.

Different goals are set for each sub-department according to the organizational aims.

Service Delivery:

Primary responsibility of this division is to ensure smooth coordination between the

activation, servicing and bill-collection activities.

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Front Office & CCP (Customer Care Point):

The importance of a good front office can never be over stated. It is the face of the

company as seen by the customers, both current and potential. There is a significantamount of coordination carried out with sales and other relevant departments of

Marketing in order to smoothly carry out all the functions of the front-office. Within a

comparatively middle-sized room in the ground floor all the various activities of the

front-office are carried out sales, servicing, billing and customer relations. The latter

refers to the handling of the numerous queries from customers in a very positive

way. All this must be done to ensure excellent customer relations vital for a service-

oriented company.

Account verification/activation:

This section is responsible for the coordination across the board of data required to

activate or alter a customer account. The other departments deliver customer forms

filled up and ready to open a new account. This is then verified and checked here

before an account is activated in the customers name. Some of the main reasons

behind this are to check against fraud and to check that taxes are paid on sets

brought in from abroad.

Adjustments:

This is the department where I worked. Their primary purpose is to check for

uncollected bills and follow-up on default customers. This department also has the

responsibility for preparing bills for corporate clients and to clarify any queries and

comply with any requests they may have regarding their bills.

Workshop:

This department may be considered to be actually two departments. The primary

workshop where sets are actually repaired si supervised by the Engineering

department but the workshop itself is run by the CSR. The other part is receipt and

delivery of faulty sets. This is done at the front office.

Finance and Commercial:

This department is responsible for coordination of various finance and fund-

management activities of PBTL. This includes LC and purchase fund management,

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This division is responsible for the actual process of preparing the bills for all the

customers and the posting of those bills by means of the courier services or by post

whichever is applicable at the necessary time to allow for delivery time and payment

by customers. This division also checks usage against credit limit. This department

has the authority to deactivate lines should a customers usage exceed his allotted orpaid credit limit. This department is also responsible for entering the various invoices

received in a batch against the various customer accounts.

Accounts:

This department is responsible for collecting direct cash or check or charging credit

cards from the customers who are paying for the service and equipment.This

department is also responsible to maintain the balance of store where sets and

equipments are gathered for future purpose and present operation.

Collection:

Here direct payment, deposit money is collected from the direct and corporate

customers, dealers and from other sources

Store:

This section is responsible to maintain the balance of store where sets and

equipments are gathered for future purpose and present operation.

Administration and Human Resource:

This department is responsible for coordinating across the board administrative

activities, the day-to-day maintenance, security, keeping and controlling relations

with Government departments and maintenance of protocols. This department is also

responsible for the well being of workers and their benefits.

Contract, Legal and Protocol:

This division is responsible for the coordination of contractual process (drawing up

contracts for individuals and organizations), assuring compliance with regulations

and legal bindings, and to coordinate high level occasions with upper management

and senior government employees.

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Contract:

The personnel in this position are responsible for the appointment and contract of

employees and to draw new ones at the end of the probationary period. They are

also responsible for canceling contracts due to contrary and unbecoming behavior or

other issue of conflict between the company and an employee.They are also responsible for supervising the drawing up of contracts with other

organizations for whatever purpose deemed necessary.

Legal:

Here, the personnel are responsible for ensuring compliance with legal issues and to

ascertain beforehand any potential conflict with government regulations.

Protocol & Government Relations:

The executive here is responsible for the coordination of various activities and

occasions involving important personnel the board of directors, senior government

employees, etc.

Procurement:

The Human Resource department is responsible for procuring future employees

according. This department is also responsible for maintaining the database of all

employees, leaves, attendance, health care and related fields of employees.

Purchase and General Administration:

He is responsible for the general purchase and support activities that entail buying

and storing office materials and supplies. He is responsible for negotiations for real

estate and other land factors. He is also responsible for coordination of general

maintenance and security activities.

Purchase & Support:

This refers to employees in Admin who are responsible for the procurement of

support materials, usually office supplies, computers for personnel, etc and the

delivery and storage of these materials. This is a very important aspect of admin

because the needs of employees are very much varied and budget is very tight. Thus

a great deal of coordination is involved here.

Estate & Properties:

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As the name states, this department is responsible for all real estate and property

related affairs. This includes finding land for transceivers, office space available for

rent at optimum location and negotiation of purchase, if need be, as well as rent.

Maintenance & general security:

The executives here are responsible for the safety and security of personnel and

equipment. He is also responsible for coordinating general maintenance activities

throughout the organization

OUTPUT OF THE INDUSTRY

CITYCELLAT PRESENT

Though Citycell is a pioneer one among the mobile companies, but it has not much

improved as expected. The main reason is the network coverages that they have.

But now at present it is improving day by day. For network coverage GP is the market

leader now. After the partial acquisition of SingTell, Citycell is going move fast for

increasing its customer base with the financial & Technical support from SingTell.

Now there are 20 lacs subscribers of Citycell and it has been seen that of these

approximately 4 lacs subscriber increased during November, 06 to June, 07. So, it is

been expected that if such operations of the company continues, the number of

subscribers would increase in future.

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Findings or Drawback

CDMA :

Due to its proprietary nature, the engineering community for solving does not

know all of CDMAs flaws.

CDMA is relatively new, and the network is not as mature as GSM.CDMA cannot offer international roaming, a large GSM advantage. Introduced in the

late 90s, the Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications is a digital cellular

used extensively in Europe and Asia. In addition to dividing its frequency allocation

by frequency, this technology allows multiple users to use same frequencies by using

a technique know as time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). In this method each pair

of user, on average are assigned only a fraction of a second every second.

GSM:

Lack of access to burgeoning American market.Like AMPS, GSM operators cannot allocate identical frequencies to adjacent cells

because of the potential for interference. Grameen, Aktel and Sheba currently use

four cell reuse patterns. Thus the systems are able to use on average one-fourth of

the total allocated frequency on each cell.

Recommendation

The analysis is based on the result of a consolidated evaluation of relevant theory

and empirical information collected accordingly. All the collected information has

been observed through the gloss of theoretical framework and has been used for

answering the problem statement. As it has been mentioned before that qualitative

research method will be conducted, which is more

19 explorative and un-structured with high emphasis on understanding (Ghauri et al,

2005, p202). The scope of qualitative data analysis comprises data reduction, data

display; conclusion drawing says Miles and Huberman (1994). Data reduction is

process of selecting focusing, simplifying the data; data display is the compressed

assembly of information which helps in the conclusion drawing. In this case, we have

focused and simplified the data according to the theory and afterword displayed

those data for an attempt to take decision and also the

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conclusion. The recommendation is made based on the conclusion which also

includes some further research direction.

CONCLUSION:

Now a-days there are fierce competition exist among the companies operating as

Mobile Service Provider in the country. Mobile industries are now in growth stage and

its areas are spreading day by day. Mobile sector plays a significant role in the

economy of Bangladesh, recently FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) through this sector

are increasing. Now almost every company has Foreign Ownership Equity. Customers

are also getting different opportunities as because fierce competition among the

companies. It will be very helpful for the country if the mobile company works for the

betterment of the peoples as well as for the country. We firmly believe that if Citycell

follows these strategies, it will be able to achieve a sustainable distinctive

competitive advantage and to run smoothly with loyal subscribers & market

leadership

REFERENCE:

City cell Year journals

News papers of Bangladesh

Bennett, R. and Blythe, J. 2002, International Marketing: Strategy Planning,Market entry and implementation, Kogan Page Limited (UK).

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