Prepaid Registration Exercise

[chenchow]

Following the footstep of many other countries, Malaysian Prepaid users are in the midst of registering their Prepaid packs. Failure to register would cause them to lose their phone lines.

I think this is another issue that fellow ReComers could grasp and analyse. This will change the sphere of telecommunication in Malaysia.

Currently, Maxis leads in the prepaid market with about 6.9 Million prepaid users, whereas Celcom is following behind with about 6.4 million prepaid users and DiGi is at 5 Million users. This gives a total of 18.3 Million Prepaid users.

After the registration process, how many prepaid users would we have remained in Malaysia? Singapore has its prepaid registration recently, and its prepaid subscribers dropped by about 11%. If the same scenario happens in Malaysia, this will bring it to 16.3 Million prepaid users, bringing down our cellphone penetration rate by quite a bit.

Would any of the telco emerges much stronger after this prepaid registration exercise? Currently, about 9.9 Million prepaid users have registered their prepaid pack, as of 17th October (according to MCMC studies). All the telcos are slashing their prices, cutting their margins relatively significant to gain a bigger pie. As of 9th October 2006, DiGi has registered 62% of its users, Maxis registered 49% of its prepaid users and Celcom followed behind at 30% registration rate. However, last week, Celcom has also stepped up its efforts to do catch up.

Any thoughts from ReComers on this issue? Would Malaysia's telecommunication sector grows after this registration exercise?

[joe_keng]

Actually, I think that this does not affect the industry very rapidly. If everyone registers on time, it would not have much impact. It can also indicate the actual number of people who really uses their handphones. Some people just wants to have many numbers. They just buy it and did not use it much.

[sunshine88]

for me,prepaid limits my expenditure.It saves money actually.Prepaid is especially useful to people who practice budget.
What i don't understand is,why there's a drop in 11% of prepaid users in Singapore.?..Is it those 11% who failed to register and thus had their phone lines barred?
..Anyhow,the reason for the registration of phone numbers of prepaid users due to unscrupulous acts of the public who circulate rumours or pranks via SMS..So,the registration meant for tracking down the people involved.
Maybe in future,the number of prepaid users will drop insignificantly....
But why??

[joe_keng]

for me,prepaid limits my expenditure.It saves money actually.Prepaid is especially useful to people who practice budget.
What i don't understand is,why there's a drop in 11% of prepaid users in Singapore.?..Is it those 11% who failed to register and thus had their phone lines barred?
..Anyhow,the reason for the registration of phone numbers of prepaid users due to unscrupulous acts of the public who circulate rumours or pranks via SMS..So,the registration meant for tracking down the people involved.
Maybe in future,the number of prepaid users will drop insignificantly....
But why??

Because some people uses the prepaid for a while and just throw it away... Usually they just use it to play pranks on people and does not want to be traced by people.

[chenchow]

On the drop of Prepaid subscribers after registration, it would be due to those who chooses not to register their phone line, either because they are using it for unscrupulous reason or they might already been lured by another telco.

As of now, while the official statistic is not yet out, it seems that the Prepaid Registration in Malaysia is much more successful than Singapore. A resounding success actually. As of a couple of days before 15th Dec 2006, when Prepaid registration ends, about 96% of Prepaid subscribers have registered their prepaid packs, i.e. about 17.8 Million out of 18.5 Million.