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The Mobile Telecommunications Industry

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The mobile telecommunications industry in Ireland has always been a competitive and rapidly changing industry. It has changed considerably from it’s initial birth with only one competitor, to it’s liberalisation in 1998, all the way through to the introduction of MVNO’s in the 2000’s. Mobile penetration has increased from 42 % in 2000 (Telecommunications and Internet Federation, 2005) to almost 97% of Irish adults owning a mobile phone now in 2013. (Irishexaminer.com, 2013) In order to fully understand the rapid development of this industry and the future of it, we must first look at its history in 1998. The Telecommunications Industry in Ireland in 1998 was a duopoly, meaning that there were only two service providers in the market. …show more content…

Also the mobile network market was much more concentrated than the supplier market, thus limiting supplier power. Despite both companies offering similar services, the threat of substitution within this industry was low. Prices for the two companies were similar, with both standing at 20p per min from 7am to 3pm on weekdays and all day on weekends (Independent.ie, 1998).The buyers propensity to substitute was further lowered by high switching costs. They were unwilling to consider the substitute as the benefit they would receive from switching companies would not outweigh the costs, they now therefore had a stronger incentive to remain with their current provider (cite). Competiitive rivalry within the industry was high. The two firms actively competed with each other in order to gain market share. The service lacked differentiation between the two yet high switching costs prevented them from stealing each others market base. They competed with each other in order to gain more coverage in rural areas and thus increase market share. They also engaged in price competition, with Esat Digifone trying to catch up with the longer established Eircell, particularly around Christmas period. With the launch of the pre paid service in 1998, Esat digifone aimed to provide lower peak rates than Eircell and differentiated themselves by allowing customers receive incoming call for 6 months even if they had run out of credit and not topped-up (Independent.ie, 1998) . Capital costs

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