But Leunam Betin, global key account manager at Ericsson Latin America North and the Caribbean, says that this strategy has not yielded results. Just as in Mexico, in Europe telecommunications operators offer connectivity services with unlimited data, but this has not allowed them to generate greater profits or strengthen their customer base, and on the contrary, has only saturated their networks.
“This aggressive commercial strategy is not achieving the objective that companies are looking for; on the contrary, what they are doing is saturating the networks because we have users who now have no control over their data consumption,” the Ericsson executive assured Expansión.
This situation has been palpable in the last four months with the Virtual Mobile Operators (MVNO), which are hosted on the Altán network, presenting failures in their telephone services. For example, Bait, Walmart’s MVNO, is one of the companies that has stood out for offering top-ups and unlimited data plans at an affordable price in order to expand its customer base, but recently it has presented failures in its services, despite the fact that the company, aware of the implications of its rates, has introduced a clause in its usage policies to avoid the degradation of its services.
“Our benefit packages have measures that must be met in order to provide a better service experience. Depending on your recharge amount, you can purchase Unlimited Internet with different validity periods and maximum data transmission speed thresholds,” states Bait’s usage policy. As the user uses up their GB, the company will begin to reduce the download speed to avoid network degradation. This plan is replicated by other MVNOs.
However, this strategy has not prevented Altán – the company that leases its infrastructure to MVNOs that are becoming increasingly important among users – from having problems with its connectivity services.
The company headed by Carlos Lerma and MVNOs such as Bait have reported failures in their network preventing, in the most serious case, access to internet and call services. The company acknowledged last April that the growth of the user base of Virtual Mobile Operators (MVNO) such as Bait Walmart’s infrastructure and network has brought with it significant challenges to effectively operating the company’s infrastructure and network.
Altán has recorded failures in the so-called maintenance windows, which allow the support of the company’s network capacity, when they are exceeded by increased traffic or data usage requested by MVNO users in their infrastructure.
For the Ericsson executive, the commercial strategy applied by operators is valid but only for a time to achieve their objective, but if they maintain the long-term plan they may enter a challenging scenario for the operation of the network that would degrade the service of users.
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