Huge dip in new activations after the stringent activation policy in place

 

Various sources reports that there is a huge dip in gross activations after the new acquisition policy came in place.

 

New acquisition policy which came in place on 9th of Nov is very stringent, though it is good for national security and avoids fraudulent acquisitons to a large extent. Due to this all operator acquisitions are reduced to more than 70% compared to an average of last six months of their acquisitions. Policy is in place and large operators are still working hard to streamline the process of acquistions to avoid possible delay in acquisitions. As of now in urban areas connections are getting activated in 3 working days and in rurel it is 7 days on an average. But still there are some cases not activated evenafter 10 days of submition of documents to retail partners.

As per the process for a new connection customers has to approach retail dealer first and submit all the relevant documents. After varifying the documents retailer will issue sim card of his/her choice but connection will not get activated at that time. As per the process retailer has to send SMS in a specific format mentioning the details of the new connection. After getting the SMS a pickup boy from the nearest distributor point will come and collect the varified and sealed document by retailer. Again distributor will check, varify and seal the documents. Post that a company representative will come and collect the documents and enter the details to an online portal. On successful completion of this customer has to dial to a specific number and furnish the name and address details as he mentioned in the documents at the time of purchase. This is to ensure the same doument owner is using the connection. Post successful completion of address varification the connection will be activated from the backend. For outstation customers, the process is little more complicated that he has to submit one local contact details along with his address proffs. His connection will get activated only after varifying both local contact and his own connection.

On the other side the new process will improve the quality of acquistion. Earlier customer used to purchase new connection only for initial talk time and after consuming that they through off the connection. This lead many operators to number constrain and lack of new numbers.