Loop Mobile says will take part in spectrum auctions to launch 3G or 4G services

Surya Mahadevan, COO, Loop Mobile, has rubbished speculation that the company is shutting shop. Instead, he said, the company is gung-ho on its value-added services and retail expansion.

And Loop has plans to launch 3G and 4G services, he told Beryl Menezes. Edited excerpts from the interview:

There has been talk that Loop is planning to sell out to an interested investor before its Mumbai licence expires in November next year...
We are looking for non-telecom financial investors, but it is to fund our participation in the upcoming auctions, where we intend to not only participate and win back our 900 Mhz spectrum, but also launch 3G or leapfrog to 4G, depending on how the industry reacts to 4G developments next year, how much spectrum we win, as well as 4G handsets and 4G backward compatibility.

Some part of the financial investor aid will also go into repatriating/reducing our debt.

Are you looking at expanding to other circles or merging with any other telco?
No, our focus will continue to be on Mumbai only and we are not looking at any mergers or acquisitions.

Any plans for handset bundling or coming out with your own handsets to increase revenue monetisation?
While we have no plans for Loop-branded handsets, we are open to handset bundling, especially for 4G. For 2G and 3G, we see no need for handset bundling at the moment.

Loop characteristically has a large number of high-Arpu (average revenue per user) customers who have been with the company for decades. However, Loop is not known for low-end, mass-market customers. Are you doing anything to change this?
Yes, in fact Loop is launching four value-added services, three of which have not been launched by any telco yet. These include M-Secure, which was launched 15 days ago for postpaid subscribers and provides handset and wallet protection, with insurance for the loss provided by One Assist.

Secondly, we are re-launching prepaid and postpaid customer loyalty programme ‘I’M Special’ launched in September, that provides buy one, get one free offers every Friday on Cinemax and PVR movie tickets, weekend offers for Essel World and Water Kingdom, Cafe Coffee Day, Lakme Salon, as well as similar offers for spas, healthcare and fine dining.

Extra content, in terms of movies, games, songs and more is another unique offering. We debuted this offering last week with Movie Talkies, under which customers can download licensed movies at minimal cost of `20-25 per movie, without incurring any data downloading fee through a wi-fi device in all Loop galleries and point of sales, including multi-brand retail stores.

This service will be available to non-Loop subscribers soon.

The fourth service, Airtime Credit Service, to be launched early next year, allows a Loop prepaid subscriber to avail emergency airtime (talktime) of small denomination of `10/20/30, on the go and pay back in the next recharge or next five recharges. This is especially useful while on national roaming, outside Mumbai where Loop is not present.

We believe these services will aid in customer stickiness and also provide us an additional revenue source.

Call drops and poor network quality is a common complaint of Loop customers in Mumbai and while roaming...
We have the best 2G network on Mumbai running on most efficient 900 Mhz spectrum, which is also congestion-free due to lack of surplus capacity on this bandwidth. In addition, we are also augmenting our data service platform and have increased our inter-circle roaming arrangements (ICR) to include Tata Docomo, Aircel and Reliance Communications, in addition to Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular. We believe so-called bad network is a perception issue, because Loop subscribers compare the superior quality of network in Mumbai, with network of other operators while on roaming, which may not be as efficient.

Mobile number portability (MNP) has been another bone of contention with Loop subscribers...
Loop has 0.5% port-outs due to MNP, and 3,500-4,500 port-ins per month into Loop. The process for MNP takes a maximum time of three days now, and can be activated from any Loop gallery.

That said, our overall acquisitions, apart from MNP, grew from 14,000 to 18,000 in the last six months -- a 34% increase.

How are your branded retail stores doing?
We have increased our branded retail stores from 56 at the beginning of the year to 71 currently, and we intend to open 100 stores by January-end. The stores are aimed at better customer connect with experienced sales executives, where first time problem resolution is 88%, compared with the industry average of 80%. This, in turn, will help us to attract better quality of customers and reduce churn.