アフマド・アル・アサド、マクトゥーブ・リサーチ

妻はかつて買い物に行ったとき、「このソファを買ったら、他に何も頼まない」と言ったことがあります。ソファはダサくて高価でしたが、私は妻の言葉を文字通りに受け止め、妻の「他に何も頼まない」という約束にそそのかされました。もっとよく調べるべきでした。後で分かったのですが、妻は何か他のものが気に入らない限り、他に何も頼まないという意味だったのです。

One of the most important questions in competitive mobile markets if you can keep your mobile number when changing between mobile operators, would you be willing to change. In most surveys, a two-digit percentage of respondents always say yes.

この驚くべき可能性と競争促進の結果として、モバイル番号ポータビリティ (MNP) と呼ばれる技術が生まれました。MNP により、モバイル ユーザーは、あるモバイル ネットワーク オペレータから別のオペレータに変更しても、自分のモバイル番号を保持できます。

Telecom professionals thought that introducing such technology would change the market shares of operators in any Arab country. In mid 2006, Saudi Arabia was the first Arab country to introduce MNP, followed shortly by Oman. UAE, Jordan and other Arab countries are close to doing the same.

So, did MNP change the market shares in the Saudi Arabian mobile marker? No, it t! After six months of launching MNP to the public for free, less than 15,000 mobile users used it (out of around 20 million mobile lines in Saudi Arabia!). So what were the reasons behind the poor adoption MNP by subscribers? And does this mean that MNP was a failure in Saudi Arabia?

On the contrary, MNP was a success in Saudi Arabia, as it achieved its main objectives: Boost competition between mobile players and enhance quality of services provided in the market. As a reaction for introducing MNP, the Saudi Mobile operators were alarmed. The mobile operators have launched extensive campaigns promoting new services, new offers, reduced rates, as well as enhancing their network quality and coverage. Hence, the reasons behind willingness to change operators vanished. Another minor reason for poor embracement of MNP was the sluggishness of mobile users of going through the process of MNP which takes up to 5 days in some cases.

MNP can be considered a preemptive procedure for fighting monopolistic competition in mobile markets. The telecommunications s main goal of introducing such service is to push operators (and mainly the dominant ones) to compete on the bases of better services, rates and quality, thus boost competition in a healthy way. The regulator t want any operator to depend on the fact that subscribers would not change their operator just because their mobile number is very precious to them.

要約すると、特定の市場で MNP が導入された場合、モバイル オペレーターは顧客のニーズを真に満たすか、顧客を失うリスクを負うかのいずれかを行う必要があります。

協力企業:
Maktoob リサーチ。アラブ首長国連邦ドバイ。www.maktoob-research.com/
連絡先: 地域研究マネージャー、Ahmad Al-Assad。 [email protected].
電話: +971 4 360 279