Photo shows customers at redONE’s Premier Shop in Kuching. MVNO redONE’s total number of subscribers in Sarawak contributes more than 10 per cent of the group’s total customer base, an indication of the growing postpaid market here. — Photo by Muhammad Rais Sanusi
State contributes more than 10 per cent of operator’s customer base
KUCHING: Mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) red ONE Network Sdn Bhd’s (redONE) total number of subscribers in Sarawak contributes more than 10 per cent of the group’s total customer base, indicative of the growing postpaid market here.
redONE, which is working together with network provider Celcom Axiata, is currently the only MVNO player in the country providing postpaid services.
According to redONE chief sales officer (CSO) Ben Teh, the MVNO has for the past three years enjoyed tremendous growth and within this short period of time, it has just broken 700,000 users.
“We are heading to a million (users) by year end,” Teh said during a press conference after the opening of redONE’s Premier Shop at Lot 3285, Block 10, Kuching Central Land District, Jalan Tun Ahmad Zaidi Adruce.
He added, next year, redONE targets two million users while by 2017, the operator is looking at four million subscribers.
In Sarawak alone, redONE has about 80,000 subscribers in Sarawak. Teh noted that while redONE has only been in Sarawak for about two years, the state contributes more than 10 per cent of redONE’s total customer base.
According to Teh, the postpaid market in overall Malaysia has been growing these past few years, due to a few factors.
He observed that customers have matured because they now know the value of postpaid services and also because the of the emergence of data requirments.
“Postpaid (services) usually gives a better data deal so a lot of people are converting themselves to postpaid,” he said, adding that with redONE customers, 35 per cent of them converted from prepaid to postpaid.
Teh emphasised that the strategy redONE uses has been proven to be very effective due the packages it offers and its long term partnership reward scheme.
“If you look at redONE’s slogan, it’s ‘back to basic’. When we designed the package for users, we asked ourselves, what do users need in communications? One thing that came to my mind is free calls,” he said.
redONE thus started offering its RM8 package which offers free calls to redONE users and over the next three years, Teh noted that many customers began to influence their peers to “get onboard” with the plan.
As such, the customers eventually grow their own ‘free call’ network and as their network of users expand, this results the customers’ long-term loyalty to redONE’s telco plan.
However, redONE realised that with data now being the main focus of users, they would need to alter their plans to suit customers’ needs.
With that, on October 1, redONE launched a special deal whereby customers with an RM8 basic plan can add on two gigabytes (GB) plus 1GB which will total into 3GB of data, unlimited, for RM40 per month.
“Customers are very excited with this plan,” Teh said. In fact, the first day redONE launched this programme, it registered the highest activation per day ever with 2,800 activations nationwide.
Aside from that, Teh noted that another differentiating factor redONE has compared with other telcos is its long term partnership reward scheme, either with its Premier Shops (PSs) or Premier Neighborhood Centres (PNCs).
In Sarawak alone, there are six PSs (three in Kuching and one each in Sibu, Bintulu and Miri) and 60 to 70 PNCs, with the latter targeted to grow to 100 by year end.
“We are sharing our revenue with our partners,” he said. “As long as customers are using their lines and paying their bills, we will share the margin with them forever.”
Unlike other telcos, Teh revealed for example when a redONE partner signs up a customer which uses redONE for 20 years, the partner will be paid commission every month for those 20 years based on the usage.
“That has changed the whole industry for ‘reward scheme for partners’. That’s why we are able to convert more than 1,000 retail dealers into redONE businesses,” he said.
Recently, redONE also announced that commissions can be passed down to next generations. However, if customers are still using redONE, the telco can pass the commission to the spouse and children.
On a side note, redONE is the first telco in Malaysia to introduce a paperless registration system and for the past year since the introduction, 60 per cent of the MVNO’s monthly activations were via this method.
“Our target is, by January 1, 2016, we hope 99 per cent of our activations will all go through paperless (registrations),” Teh said.
On any plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in the future, Teh shared that they are looking into it.
“We are now having some investment banks and also auditors coming to do evaluation on redONE but we are not in a rush because market is down at the moment.
“But, we are seriously looking to expand to neighbouring countries, especially Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
“In fact, we have talked to a few mobile network operators (MNOs) in these few countries and we have very good and positive feedback.
“Next year, we will be focusing on expanding redONE to these three countries,” Teh said adding that this is all part of the company’s vision to become the largest MVNO in Asean region.