Thai Mobile Phone Operator, Microsoft Woo Corporate Users

Nov. 3–The mobile phone operator DTAC has entered a business alliance with Microsoft and Metro Systems to provide business productivity applications on the air, targeting corporate users and large enterprises.

The move is part of DTAC’s strategy to increase its data revenue base by fourfold to 15 percent of total earnings next year.

DTAC has invested six million baht in a Business Productivity Centre, which is a joint venture with Microsoft, Intel Corp and the SET-listed IT provider Metro Systems Corporation. Founded in December with more than 20 million baht in investment cost, the demonstration and testing centre has so far drawn 500 executives and 100 enterprises to visit.

Sigve Brekke, co-chief executive officer of DTAC, said mobile business solutions, developed by Microsoft, would be transferred between communication devices through DTAC’s Edge and GPRS network services, enabling users to download applications and content at transmission speeds of 237 kilobytes per second.

Under the initial stage of “The Business on the Go”, three mobile applications will be offered: sales force solutions, mobile workflow and business intelligence solutions.

“The services, scheduled for commercial introduction in the next two months, are expected to attract 500 large-sized enterprises, bringing our total corporate customers to 5,500 next year,” Mr Brekke said.

“The proportion of our corporate revenue is also expected to increase from 10 percent to 15 percent of total revenue next year.”

DTAC has invested 8.43 billion baht in Edge network facilities including nationwide hardware and 550 base stations in Bangkok, Chon Buri and Rayong.

The company has 700,000 users nationwide for its existing GPRS network. Approximately 15,000 are using its Edge services.

According to Andrew McBean, managing director of Microsoft (Thailand), the total number of mobile phone users in Thailand could reach 27 million this year. The figure far exceeds the number of people who own personal computers, which hold about 80 percent of all business data and information, he said.

Mr Brekke said DTAC’s business focus next year would be in three areas: distribution channels, customer retention management (CRM) and segmentation, in a bid to curb the company’s record-high churn rate of 8 percent.

He said that as many as 900,000 local cellular customers a month, mostly in the prepaid market, were defecting from one operator to another.

The company had set up a CRM team for prepaid services to reduce its churn rate and also acquire prospective “promotion hunters” who make use of services and then cancel when new promotions come along elsewhere, Mr Brekke said.

DTAC has a total of 7.6 million subscribers, second behind Advanced Info Service Plc which has about 15 million.

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