Do you think the Telecom XT brand is damaged, and if so what can Telecom do?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Do you think the Telecom XT brand is damaged, and if so what can Telecom do?

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342 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#300869 21-Feb-2010 23:43

And yes. recently I have seen a considerably more people are using vodafone than last year, especially after the outage.

3g

341 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#300886 22-Feb-2010 07:10

freitasm: One for you guys: do you think the "XT" brand is damaged after the problems in the last couple of months? Yes, no, and if yes, what do you think should Telecom do to recover it?

Yes - majorly damaged. The company I work for was considering swapping - but we now won't touch them (and Vodafone have *finally* come up with a good deal).

Realistically, I think they'll need to:
(1) Rebrand
(2) Come up with a good marketing campaign that implies they've re-engineered their network.

Nigel H.

Behodar

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#300894 22-Feb-2010 07:46

richms: The problem with offering a switch to CDMA is the total lack of handsets for it now.

Telecom could find more CDMA phones if necessary. Verizon in the US supplies CDMA phones so it's obviously still possible to get them from somewhere :)

JasonDarwin

33 posts

Geek

#300899 22-Feb-2010 08:12

3g:
freitasm: One for you guys: do you think the "XT" brand is damaged after the problems in the last couple of months? Yes, no, and if yes, what do you think should Telecom do to recover it?

Yes - majorly damaged. The company I work for was considering swapping - but we now won't touch them (and Vodafone have *finally* come up with a good deal).

Realistically, I think they'll need to:
(1) Rebrand
(2) Come up with a good marketing campaign that implies they've re-engineered their network.

Nigel H.

It's not a new marketing campaign that implies they've re-engineered their network that's needed.

What they need is the CEO fronting their campaign stating the network is fixed. People want honesty.

old3eyes

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#300901 22-Feb-2010 08:34

Behodar:
richms: The problem with offering a switch to CDMA is the total lack of handsets for it now.

Telecom could find more CDMA phones if necessary. Verizon in the US supplies CDMA phones so it's obviously still possible to get them from somewhere :)

Hmm. Motorola Droid comes to mind..

Regards,

Old3eyes

nix

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Master Geek
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#300903 22-Feb-2010 08:43

Yes! The Telecom brand is seriously damaged at the moment. I have only been affected by the December outage, but keep a nervous eye on what is happening. But for the grace of Alcatel Lucent ...

I spent several weeks away from Auckland in December and January and found it nigh on impossible to get an XT signal in lots of places in the country. Telecom need to get their infrastructured "mended" and spoend some serious dollars keeping their small business customers happy. My contracts run out in a few months and I won't be wary about jumping ship if things still look dodgy.

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coffeebaron

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#300908 22-Feb-2010 09:14

sbiddle: At this stage their only chance is through pricing, people will very quickly forget the history is the price is good.

= catch 22

Drop the pricing, more people sign up, more load on their network = more chance of failure / overloading / more bad experience.

They really need to spend 6-12months to first rebuild the reliability of their network, before they can look at being competitive again.

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grant_k

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#300918 22-Feb-2010 10:08

Yes, the XT brand is seriously damaged without question.

Even before the December and January outages, there were problems with connection stalls and disconnects when using various data devices. Mauricio, myself and many others encountered these at the time.

I started using an MF636 USB data stick in September last year with high expectations of speed etc. Yes, the speed was there when it was working, but too often it wasn't, and I wished that I had kept my old laptop which was able to use the EV-DO data card, because that always ran like clockwork and was utterly dependable.

To Telecom's credit, they did manage to mostly fix the above problems with data devices, but then a series of blanket outages hit, taking down service for entire sectors of the network, mostly south of Taupo.

I feel a huge amount of sympathy for those affected during the December, January and also the recent February outages. For me, the poor quality service with the data stick last year was very annoying, but at least I had a separate mobile phone which has always worked with impeccable reliability (thanks to 2D and Vodafone). Fortunately, I didn't have all my eggs in the one basket, which may be a wise policy in view of recent events.

As for what Telecom could do to repair the damage to their brand:

- First and foremost there must be NO MORE OUTAGES !!!
- Secondly, some considerable time must elapse with no more outages (probably at least a year)
- Thirdly, Telecom should reward those who have stuck with them through this debacle e.g. with some loyalty credits, increasing gradually according to the length of time any given customer has been connected on XT

Regarding pricing, my opinion is that Telecom has very good DATA PRICING, especially for their prepay customers such as myself. 10c per MB, charged only when you use it is great and on this basis, XT Mobile Data will continue to get my vote, in spite of the recent outages.

However, regarding VOICE and TXT pricing, there is much work to be done if Telecom want to compete with 2D in the prepay space. Maybe they just don't care and are pitching XT primarily at business customers, and if so -- fair call, that is their decision to make. However, if they do want to retain prepay customers who use mostly Voice Calls rather than hundreds of TXT messages every month (i.e. targetting older customers here), then charging people 89c per minute to call a landline or another mobile just doesn't cut it any more. It is extortion, plain and simple, and when the many people who have been happily using their 027 phones on CDMA for donkeys years suddenly realise the network is about to close, and they are up for a new phone ... well, it's a bit of a no brainer really isn't it ... why would they want to buy a new phone solely for XT, when a 900MHz 2G phone will work on Voda or 2D so they have a much better choice when it comes to prepay calling plans.

That's my 10c worth anyway...

fab

155 posts

Master Geek

#300921 22-Feb-2010 10:20

Consumerism 101: People have short memories.

Just look at the politicians people keep voting in...Winston is a classic example of Short Memory Syndrome.

There's nothing an effective marketing campaign won't fix for XT...IMO.

wongtop

569 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#300933 22-Feb-2010 11:00

nitrotech: I agree the brand is seriously damaged, when XT launched we all commented at the time that the pricing plans were disappointing, telecom were charging a premium for what they believed to be a premium product.

The problems of the past few months mean that there is no basis to now charge a premium, pricing is the only real option to rebuild the lost ground.

I agree with this 100%. I think Telecom looked across the Tasman and saw that Telstra were able to charge a premium for their NextG network and thought that they would be able to attract a similar premium here. However;
1. NextG has a significant coverage foot print advantage over its competitors (circa 99% by population vs 95%-96% for its competitors)
2. NextG has a significant speed advantage over its competitors.

Telecom has none of these advantages over Vodafone here (swings and roundabouts with coverage, and neck and neck for headline speeds).

Without a significant coverage or speed advantage, and now what is at least perceived to be at a disadvantage with respect to reliability, Telecom IMO will need a signifcant price advantage to win back significant numbers of new customers back from Vodafone.

ScottStevensNZ

245 posts

Master Geek

#300935 22-Feb-2010 11:05

timmyh: 1. Fix the problems once and for all - make sure they stay fixed. If necessary start migrating the network to Huawei - I'm sure they'll do a good price.

2. Ditch the XT brand and relaunch as Telecom Mobile under the new Telecom branding. This should cover the CDMA and 3GSM networks, at the end of the day customers don't care.

3. Make a big splash in launching the iPhone and the iPad ASAP leveraging the 850MHz 3G advantage while it lasts. Position these devices as heroes for a whole new category of 'Mobile Internet Devices' (MID's) along with Android phones and tablets in the near future. Give this MID category its own area in store with really skilled sales people and specialist support - again borrowing from the Apple store model.

4. Don't ever let this happen again.

+1

Agree absolutely with the MID direction - set themselves apart from Voda and offer cheap data and borrow from the apple store model.

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Cymro

283 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#300961 22-Feb-2010 12:39

Yes.

1. Be open about the Design review, don't fluff over it, make sure the customers know who was at fault and what is being done about it.

2. Reward Customers who decide stick with XT through this, 6 months double minutes/text etc.

3. Create a new ON-shore call-centre team to log and deal exclusively with XT service issues.

At the end of the day though, I'm sure there is a sizable element of the New Zealand Public who will never trust the brand again, the amount of journalistic (and I use that term loosely) jingo that has been spouted over the XT faults has transcended facts and truth and sailed merrily into the realms of hyperbole and ad hom.

eXDee

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#300972 22-Feb-2010 12:59

Question: IF xt had a gsm fallback, running under a different system (ie all the servers etc were separate), would such outages have been prevented to some extent?

Yes i agree its damaged - I work in a store which sells mobiles.
I hear people complaining about coverage as well as the outages all of the time.
I hear plenty of complaints about the R100/R150 phones, not only failing and being faulty, but being just plain terrible.
I get people who totally avoid everything XT and ask if there are CDMA phones available.
Many complain about the mobile range (ie the only entry level phones are the aforementioned R series)
Some previous telecom customers will avoid everything XT and concentrate on the vodafone display.
And this is hardly scientific, but since the outages/bad publicity i recall very few XT phone sales.

Not every complaint is totally justified but thats what the public thinks.

grant_k

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#300975 22-Feb-2010 13:11

eXDee: I hear people complaining about coverage as well as the outages all of the time.

I've also heard this from various people around our rural area.

On the old CDMA network, they had reasonable coverage, but on XT, there is nothing, zip, nada.

People like that are never going to migrate to XT.

Behodar

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#300976 22-Feb-2010 13:15

Indeed, the coverage isn't as good as it used to be. I live in a valley and had 3-4 bars of CDMA coverage, but only 1-2 of XT coverage. It's still usable for me (especially since I can walk to the front of the house when a call comes in, making it jump to 3-4 bars) but not as good as it used to be.

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