Bell Wireless Alliance key to MTS Mobility’s competitiveness in Canadian market

The former head of MTS Mobility says that membership in the Bell Wireless Alliance (BWA) is key to the company’s future competitiveness in Canada’s wireless telecommunications market. Roger Ballance, executive VP of marketing and sales and chief marketing officer for MTS Communications Inc., tells Report on Wireless that being part of the BWA helps the company deal with some of the challenges of being a regional wireless player. "We believe as a regional player that we have many strengths but there are some things on the scale and scope side that we really do need alignment on to provide national consistency to our customers. This is a way of being able to look like a virtual national player to our customers," he tells RoW. Ballance says that the company confronts the usual challenges in the mobile wireless business such as increasing average revenue per user (ARPU), improving customer satisfaction, building loyalty with customers, and keeping churn to a minimum. But, he admits, there are some unique challenges from a regional player perspective that the national wireless operators don’t have to face. "Handsets tend to be designed and developed for the larger national players and not the regional ones. The economies of scale with handsets and the associated handset subsidies in our industry certainly require regional companies to align with larger players to leverage their size and to minimize our cost of acquisition," Ballance explains. "That national alliance really enables MTS to respond like a national operator but maintain its regional focus and advantages," he adds. The company also faces challenges regarding the implementation of new services such as mobile browsing, wireless data and applications, which are becoming more important to customers. "MTS Mobility must add more platforms and capabilities to offer these services, and the common cost to offer these services is really quite high and prohibitive for a regional player to be involved in all these new services. So to ensure delivery of these new services in a timely manner and from a competitive perspective, again we rely on our Bell Wireless Alliance on that front," Ballance explains. Regional focus an advantage Despite the challenges facing regional wireless players, Ballance says it does have an advantage in some respects over its larger national rivals. He highlights the importance of wireless data services and wireless content as being a key differentiator in the future for MTS Mobility. "In addition to national and international content that would be available from some of our partners and larger players, we do think that it’s important to differentiate ourselves based on providing a strong base of local content. We believe the customers in our market have an interest not only in looking at things going on nationally, but also understanding what’s going on, for example, this weekend in Winnipeg, Selkirk or Dauphin," Ballance explains. The bundling of wireless, wireless and TV distribution also represents a significant opportunity going forward, notes Ballance, adding that more can be done in this area to capture market share. "Customers in Manitoba, like everywhere else, are always looking for a good deal. So we have to find ways of packaging these various lines of business to provide appeal to them and presumably even better value than they get today," he explains. SMS and short codes can also offer the regional wireless player the ability to tap into the need for localized content and drive revenue, says Ballance. "I think a lot of our eyes were opened when we saw the number of hits and calls that were placed when the Canadian Idol contest was on. These things tend to start with the youth market and others start to become more comfortable with some of the applications. But I think we’re just starting to see the beginning of these in the short code area," he says. A full transcript of the interview with Roger Ballance is available here.

Bell Wireless Alliance key to MTS Mobility’s competitiveness in Canadian market

News | October 21, 2003

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