OTT Advent, What next for Brands in Nigeria’s Telecom Industry?
The insinuation in some quarters that the activities of Over the Top content providers (OTT) appear to be a threat to handler of brands in Nigerian telecommunications industry is fast coming to reality. One of the burning issues is a statement by the founder of facebook, Mark Zuckerberg when he visited Nigeria some time last year that in no time, there will be no need to pay for voice calls again.
On this note, Analysts are of the view that, if this happens, brands in Nigerian Telecom industry will be losing an estimated amount of about N10 billion monthly. For these analysts, owners of the said brands have to think fast on how to improve on their data business by way of providing quality service or else, they will close shops. That not withstanding, they will still have issues of trust to deal with if other internet service providers brace up with the trend.
To this end, the sincerity of brand in relation to its ability to deliver on promise is expressly tangible, what happens is that such offerings are often times economic with truth! For instance, how would one judge a Telecom brand that promise connecting people at an affordable price and ended up encroaching into consumers’ privacy with unsolicited text messages at an additional coast?
Analysts are therefore of the views that the responsibility for brands’ sincerity rest with the brand owner. There was an airline brand in Nigeria at a time that promise direct flight between Lagos and New York (nothing in between). It was a clear quantifiable value offer within the consideration of emotion. Though such brand offer was based on emotion, it was clearly positioned/sold on the basis of direct flight no stop over.
That is what Nigerian consumers crave for when it comes to Telco brands in Nigerian market. Predominantly, the decision to buy among target consumers in Nigeria Telco market is based on emotional consideration. Therefore, most of the brand handlers make all sort of claim, they succeed in market objectives, because the target consumer is in addition not discerning.
Broadly speaking, Nigeria Telco industry is categorised into voice and data. While the voice is presumably targeted at both high and low income earners, the data segment is for the private and public organisation. The general assumption is that both categories are same in purpose and consumer expectation.
To all intent and purposes, there is no inherent danger in using either of the category, but the problem however, is that advertising for all these categories are not sincere about their constituents and categorisation. A lot of consumers are deliberately made to most of the time subscribe to what they intent not to subscribe to via subtle marketing. This situation has made most patrons of brands in Nigeria Telco sector to consider other alternative if any.
With recently development of Netflix, one of World’s leading Internet TV service provider choosing Sprectanet, one of Nigeria’s leading 4G broadband service provider, to deploy one of the first dedicated Netflix servers in Africa means internet company are bracing up with the trend. The server will hold the entire Netflix content library, in Lagos, providing Nigerians with the best possible video streaming performance.
Speaking to Daily Times on this development recently in Lagos, CEO of Sprectanet, Mr David Venn said “because we focus on providing families with an excellent and affordable broadband service, this partnership with Netflix means that our customers will be able to enjoy the very best TV experience available in Nigeria. We are honoured that Netflix has selected Sprectanet for one of its first deployments in Africa and the only one in West Africa.”
Continuing, he said that, this partnership will help people see how fast their Internet connection is, whether on mobile or broadband – Netflix offers an independent tool that consumers can use for greater insight and control of their Internet service.
Godwin Anyebe
