29/05/2016 06:18 AST
Zain Bahrain is making a pitch to grab a leading role in the “digital lifestyle”, says the company’s marketing director Roland Loestcher.
Responsible for the company’s strategic and tactical marketing activities, Mr Loestcher told the GDN in an interview that it believes communications technology enhances almost every aspect of customers lives and they are not just consumers of data, but collaborators and partners in innovation.
According to him, the ‘digital age’ and the ‘digital lifestyle’ are major global disruptors.
“The digital age refers to how businesses and governments are changing the way they are communicating with customers.
“Whereas it used to be unidirectional, now things are changing so that communication comes from all directions,” he says.
Today, there are open platforms where customers and other stakeholders can initiate the dialogue and companies have to respond.
The digital landscape is creating a more open and inclusive world, in which data is sovereign and its users have more independence than ever before, Mr Loestcher added.
He says the company’s mantra is “innovation, simplicity and choice” as it looks to create customised services and products serving an increasing demand for higher performance and connectivity.
Personalised data packages and add-ons, branded ‘The Big Gigs Family’, ‘Dangerous Prepaid’ and ‘Addicted to Data’, are examples of this.
Almost all transactions are now conducted online and via mobile devices, including subscriptions and renewals of a host of broadband and data products.
Customised enterprise packages were also developed for corporate clients, including financial institutions, hospitality groups, multinationals, transportation companies and tech companies.
The ongoing surge in Big Data usage brings unparalleled business opportunities.
Mobile data growth in the Middle East and Africa soared 117 per cent in 2015, and is expected to continue growing at a compounded annual rate of 71pc in the next five years, citing data in the public domain.
According to Mr Loestcher, these figures, far ahead of global rates, confirm the belief that these developing regions represent the most exciting geographies for mobile telecommunications activity.
Anticipating this, Zain Bahrain invested more than $100 million in the last few years to develop an advanced 4G-LTE network.
Citing data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority, he said daily data usage surged to a record 145 terabytes in 2015.
The number of LTE users grew by 141pc, taking Zain Bahrain’s customer base to 795,071, another all time high.
Worldwide data traffic increased eightfold, and is expected to exceed 30.6 exabytes a month by 2020, he said. Mobile video, already accounting for 55pc of all mobile data traffic, is predicted to increase to 75pc over the same period, turning the world into one big village requiring higher speeds and data capacities.
According to him, Zain Bahrain’s marketing push is also increasingly gravitating towards social media and new media.
This he says is in a bid to stay better connected with consumers allowing the company to respond better and faster to consumer demands in an increasingly competitive market.
Mobile broadband prices in Bahrain fell by up to 55pc, while fixed broadband prices saw a decline of up to 85pc between 2010 and 2015, according to a study released by the kingdom’s telecom watchdog in December last year.
Another survey by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority showed that twelve per cent of respondents who own fixed line have switched their fixed line providers in 2015.
Same percentage of respondents have switched their mobile service providers and slightly lower percentage of respondents (10pc) have switched their Internet service providers.
“Quality of Service” is the ma
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