- 15 Months After Privatization of Turkish Telecom – 1
- Dr.Doany; Salaries Will Be Get An Increase In March – 2
- Dr.Doany : Oger Telecom Staff is Assisting TT Staff – 3
- Dr.Doany : 26,000 Job Applications Received for TT in a year – 4
- Dr.Doany : We Compliant With Our Concession Aggreement Obligations
- Dr.Doany : 2007 Investment Plan is 1,3 Billion YTL – 6
- Dr.Doany : Wholesale Tariff is Waiting for Approval – 7
- Dr.Doany : Our Real Competitor Is Mobile – 8
The rivals in Turkey and Telecom Sector Companies issues we are discussing in that part.
Question – 22 : What are the services you have recently launched or you are planning to launch?
Dr.Paul Doany : Currently our primary focus is in the residential market, as we see major growth opportunities in traffic (particularly national long distance, and international), in addition to value added services.
We have achieved some good results with fixed SMS, which is much better than we had expected, because our prices are much lower than mobile SMS. Fixed SMS service provides convenience to our customers, especially the younger age ones. It may provide an effective means of interaction through real-time reality TV, in addition to voting programs. We were also happy that Avea initiated a three month promotion, to boost its own traffic in that regard. Turkey, being a price sensitive market, I think we will do better than other European fixed operators.
The Family Card is a successful service, with now close to 750,000 users. It is a very interesting concept, where charges may be added to their fixed line bill. The card ma be used anywhere, so it is convenient for students or other people who prefer not to carry cash.
Voicemail was launched recently, but that was done for convenience to our customers, not to generate revenue. Our customers can use our memory facilities, because you can have multiple voice mails to the single line. If you have a line with 4-5 family members, you can have separate messages with a code. It’s like getting your own message directly to you.
In terms of new products, the main projects we are working on are IPTV and also a fixed-mobile convergence product (FMC), based on Wi-Fi / GSM. Such products have been successfully launched by other European operators, and show much promise for the future. We expect to run a couple of pilot projects in each of these sometime this year.
We have some new products and services being planned: we also have some cross-selling plans with Avea, which pilot has been launched successfully. We are also gradually getting into full convergence, and this depends on how the regulatory regime will work out.
We also have a VOIP project, which will be suitable for corporate customers. We purposely delayed the launch of EDP (Electronic Data Processing) mature offerings, until the company is ready.
Question – 23 : What is the number of fixed line subscribers and ADSL services?
Dr.Paul Doany : We have 18.9 million fixed line subscribers, and the number of ADSL subscribers is around 3 million.
Question – 24 : What kind of end-user campaigns will you have during 2007? Have you already made any plans?
Dr.Paul Doany : We have launched a new advertising campaign for our new rebalance voice offerings, in addition to our bad debt campaign. This covers all media. We have launched a ‘media effectiveness’ survey, and are tracing customer reactions very closely.
We have also launched local media campaigns in the various provinces, including the new offerings from TTnet for ADSL services.
Question – 25 : What is the latest situation about “My First PC” and “Free Modem” Campaigns? Do you think “My First PC” campaign failed? If yes, is it because of the fact that the vendors do not have PCs on their stocks. What do you think?
Dr.Paul Doany : We launched this campaign with Casper and Vestel, and it was based on an order period by customers. The total sale figures was limited to the two types of computers we launched. There were some stock limitations initially, but these were resolved.
Note however that both Casper and Vestel are now ADSL Solution Partners, and are promoting ADSL sales regardless of the first PC campaign. Our objective was to increase awareness, and to promote PC sales of all kinds. This objective was achieved, with over 500,000 new ADSL connections. That is a big success.
Question – 26 : You have launched a new campaign for the bad debts. Have you achieved your goal? We have heard that you will receive 1 percent of the total bad debts? Is this true? If yes, why the percentage is that low?
Dr.Paul Doany : The Bad Debt Campaign was started on January 8, 2007 and planned to finish by February 28. However upon intensive demands and requests of our customers, now we are planning to extend the campaign period.
The principal amount is 690 million YTL which reaches to 2 billion YTL together with the interests. The total number of cases is 2 million.
TT’s target is to collect 150-200 million YTL under this campaign, which represents 30-45 % of the principal amount.
The number of the cases closed so far within the campaign process is about 500,000 and TT collected over 80 million YTL, which represents 14 percent our target.
The percentage you referred is correct as we offer a significant reduction in the debts depending on whether the customers want to pay their debts in full or in instalments. Here the purpose is to give a start to a new relation between us and our customers. We believe that we will achieve our target.
At the following chapter, Dr.Doany : Voice Tariff Rebalancing was a Fundamental Assumption of the Business Plan – 10 you will find Dealers, Avea, British Telecom, Telecom Italia relations and new expanding plans.
Turkish translation of that part at Doany : Tatlya Balayalm’n Hedefi % 35-40 – 9
Whole interview as Turkish and English, will be reached at Paul Doany Interview file.