Users' tribes inside the Brazilian telecommunication market
Brazilian telephony market is going through a process of forming users' tribes, and so the voice communication between the members is cheaper than between members of different tribes.
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Using promotional minutes offered by mobile operators, it's possible to make on-net calls for an average price which is closer to fixed telephone calls (R$ 0.10), which is much cheaper than calls to other tribes.
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The first ones to be affected in this process were the public pay phones, that had their use in minutes (in 2010) reduced to 30% from the observed in 2007.
The integration between the users tribes is increasing due to the addition of promotions for long distance calls. By the TIM's Infinity plan, which offers on-net calls in all over Brazil costing R$ 0.25, the carrier became responsible for 48% of the minutes in national long distance calls in Brazil in Dec/10.
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This path starts to be followed by other operators, including the fixed telephony carriers. NET, for example, has a plan in which unlimited calls FIXED-FIXED can be made all over the country for R$ 50.00 by month. The trend points out to plans with unlimited on-net calls for a month established price, like what happens in Nextel's radio communication (PTT).
This is a welcome fall of prices and as a result Brazilian people are talking more on cell phone. The monthly minutes of use (MOU) in cellular, which reached 87 minutes in 2009, hit 109 minutes in 2010. Long distance traffic increased more than 30% in Dec/10 if compared with Dec/09.
The next step of the market may be toward the reduction of prices for call between tribes. The high cost of calls between different tribes stimulates the possession of more than one chip what weakens the relationship between the user and the operator.
It already happens with mobile calls for fixed telephones, those are being included in operator's free minute packages.
There's a smaller room for promotions in Fixed-Cellular calls because they have an average cost by minute (without taxes) of R$ 0.55, from this value an average of R$ 0.42 is addressed to pay for the use of mobile network (interconnection).
The price charged for calls between carriers is set by Anatel, which will use the model of costs in order to promote a gradual reduction, like what is happening in many parts of the world. In March/11, OFCOM (United Kingdom) and ARCEP (France) announced measures to reduce the interconnection price. OFCOM plans to cut interconnection in 80% price until 2014.
The reduction of the interconnection price needs to be carried out in a gradually way because its revenue represents 27% of the mobile operators' service gross revenue in 4Q10.
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