2015, the survival year of virtual operators

2015 is the second year of the development of virtual operators, but also the final year of the state-mandated pilot period. According to people familiar with the situation, due to the uneven development of 41 virtual operators, the state will revoke the resale licences of the poorly developed enterprises after the end of the pilot period in 2015.

According to data statistics, after more than half a year development, dozens of virtual operators up to now the cumulative development of less than 2 million users, of which more to the Unicom resale business mainly, followed by telecommunications, mobile is expected in the first quarter of this year put number. Viewed from the user scale, the user and the market attitude to the virtual operator is far less than the enterprise propaganda.

Some virtual operators in the interview, said, "The past six months, the development of virtual operators have a high profile, but also whispered, but the mentality are stones, wait for the majority." ”

In their view, the cause of this phenomenon is many. From the big side, the state encourages private enterprises to enter the telecommunications industry, but lacks effective supervision and unified development standards, leading to the road; Secondly, in terms of market behavior, the cooperation between basic operators and virtual operators lacks standard supervision, ' Zero upside down problem remains serious, which has become the biggest obstacle to the emergence of virtual operators.

The existential perplexity of the imaginary quotient

The Ministry of Industry issued a resale of the pilot document clearly stipulates that the resale wholesale price should not be higher than the actual retail price of operators, in fact, market-oriented end users of the flow of sales prices far below wholesale, or even below 50 percent. Regional operators to set prices, market price system confusion, operators have not yet launched a substantive resale wholesale price adjustment policy.

According to the reporter understand, from the current number of users, snail mobile row in all virtual operators in the first, close to 300,000 households. This is inseparable from its high input, high-profile publicity and spare no effort to optimize the product. such as its launch of the product main free of rent, free package, free roaming fees, free of the minimum consumption and with their own main game business bundle.

With snail mobile President Chen Yan words, "snail mobile is through line online mode, the entire professional integration operation, through the game and communication barriers." "But she's still confused.

She said to Tencent technology, "the difficulties in the development of the industry, in addition to zero upside down, the number of interconnection, SMS identification and other issues, but also need time to solve." Especially with the advent of the 4G era, the average flow rate is decreasing, if the flow of settlement is too high, the formation of bulk upside down, will result in high operating costs, recovery period, such as the president difficulties. ”

The same trouble also occurred in the Beijing-East Communications, Beijing-East communications general manager Pao Tencent Technology, "the basic operators have never been open to resale enterprises" Directional flow ' and other network basic ability, the resale enterprise cannot according to the network data content to carry on the traffic operation to the user, serious impact on the resale of products and services innovation, it is difficult to form differentiated services, product operation homogeneity of the phenomenon of serious, many resale enterprises still follow the traditional carrier mode, through the offline channel number mode of development of business, contrary to the open mind of the telecommunications market 。 ”

It is understood that last October, some virtual operators and basic operators signed the "Mobile resale price dynamic adjustment mechanism" agreement, the new "dynamic mechanism" after the formation of the basic operators to adjust tariffs, virtual operators to obtain "wholesale price" is expected to get "linkage" adjustment, the industry hopes that with the establishment of dynamic mechanism, Zero upside down problem can be solved. However, from the content of the agreement, only is expected to linkage adjustment, not to zero upside down and unified provisions for resale wholesale price policy.

In this respect, Suning Internet Deputy general manager Shuai in an interview, said, "2014 as a virtual operator of the first year, some services and products at the beginning of the listing unavoidably some flaws and deficiencies, such as some of the bank SMS notification, Network corner display." At present, there is a large number of users of the ' virtual operators ', ' gain communication products ' understanding is not enough, to accept the selection process and other issues. ”

It is not difficult to see that the regulatory standards, zero upside down, number interoperability, SMS identification and other issues have become the largest virtual operators in the past six months the biggest puzzle, how to solve these problems in 2015 the development of the most important.

At the same time, at the user level, since the inception of the virtual operators, the catfish effect, the communication market has changed, its proposed a lot of package "new concept", in the base operator 4G package is also widely adopted to promote. It is precisely because of the inherent carrier brand and service long-term dependence, few users take the initiative to accept the virtual operator business, more is the enterprise marketing to play the vote of the attempt.

According to the relevant data, individual virtual operators daily increase the minimum time for zero, more than thousands of (catch up with marketing activities), and most of the Baixin people around.

Business model not formed

At present, the state has temporarily closed the application window for resale business, the existing 41 virtual operators a wide variety, involving dozens of industries. Is there competition? The answer is yes. And how to survive has attracted the attention of the industry. In the virtual operator's own view, even if more enterprises participate in the market segments of potential business opportunities are enough to survive.

In the process of virtual operator development, the difference is repeatedly mentioned, so the key lies in whether the business model of each family conforms to the positioning of its own subdivision area. In this respect, just in the fifth batch of virtual operators on the list of Dr. Peng, although the development of time to suffer, but the slightest impact on its planning.

In this respect, Dr. Peng Executive vice president, responsible for resale business Wu Shaoyan to Tencent Science and Technology, said, "Our pilot period is the shortest, but we are the only one to do fixed-line broadband enterprises, solid network integration products are our positioning." From the development of foreign virtual operators, the virtual operators should be niche, specialized market, and basic operators to form complementary, otherwise difficult to survive. ”

It is understood that Dr. Peng's current resale business is in preparation, the first quarter is expected to officially put the number. Similarly, he also stressed that fixed net zero upside down problem also needs to be solved.

For the virtual operator of the business model, 41 almost not exactly the same, which is doomed to Station, difficult to have a good industrial environment. If the bus that locates the bus wifi is online, Wang Jinhu, its chairman, said, "the most important issue of bus online itself is the challenge of terminal users ' ability to operate, which is a year of trial and error to the industry's predecessors to learn, accumulate, in the C-terminal product design, services and processes there are a lot of room for optimization." ”

It is understood that the mobile bus WiFi deployment and operation cost is very high, only hardware facilities will be tens of millions, this does not include flow costs, personnel costs, operating costs, maintenance costs. Previously, Wang Jinhu said, "The success of public transport WiFi depends on the operator's perfect 4G network, and the current 4G network can not achieve large-scale public transport WiFi." ”

In addition, specific to the operator and the technology and services encountered by the difficulties are also virtual operators unexpected, combined with the recent user's spit is not enough to think odd. According to him, because of business support, call center, system development are built, bus online and communications business mobile application level also has a lot of input, the total investment close to 80 million yuan.

In the interview process of Tencent Technology, dozens of virtual operators agreed that the breakthrough in market segments is the key to the early and future development of virtual operators. But market segments face multiple challenges. In this respect, the industry pointed out, one is how to combine their main business to find the right direction? Second, how to deal with competitors of similar field, especially the virtual operators with large volume. The third is the number of small segments of the market space how big? Four is the industry management system is highly unified.

From the current development of virtual operators, most still stay in the basic communications business of the resale, nothing more than daring to break the routine, the real market segments of the business model has not appeared, or to mature there is no small gap.

Who will be the winner in the future?

Analysts believe that 41 virtual operators, after the end of the pilot period may also increase, as long as not the focus of the basic operators of the field, virtual operators can generate market segments. But there may be a reduction, after all, competition will be eliminated, especially the original 2B business of the resale enterprises, in the business model is not clear enough, the license plate can only become dead.

People familiar with the matter told the media that at the end of the pilot period in 2015, the state will revoke the business license of the enterprises with poor development, because the pilot period is also a country to investigate the innovative ability of the private enterprise, for can not activate the traditional market, break the original monopoly pattern of enterprises naturally to eliminate

In this respect, share communications chairman Shizhihang said, "The future with the telecommunications market competition, there will be some virtual operators out of the market, but also there will be new virtual operators continue to enter, this is a healthy market normal phenomenon." The domestic telecommunications market is large enough and new market demand will continue to emerge. Virtual operators must adhere to the fine tillage of their own market segments, adhere to the advantages of innovation, I believe there will be a considerable number of virtual operators in the fierce market competition to survive and grow. ”

Slightly different from this point of view the snail mobile President Chen Yan that "most virtual operators should be able to survive, but the market needs more unique virtual operators." Among them, occupy more than 80% of the market share will appear around 5, the future big pattern is likely to appear snails, Ali, Jingdong, and one or two channel virtual operators to become industry leader, more innovative thinking of the Internet companies will have more advantages. ”

As for how to become a winner, Suning Internet deputy general Manager Shuai Frankly, simple copy basic operators certainly no way out, the way must be hit the user needs of the new category and new products. After a year of pilot, a number of virtual operators have found their own business development routes, can be expected in the future "light operation", "wet operation" of the virtual trader will have a lot.

Relevant institutions predict that the future of the domestic market will have a certain proportion of the network capacity by the virtual operators occupy the market size of 5 years will reach 50 billion yuan, but like other industries, into a steady development phase, the inevitable experience shuffle.

A list of 41 virtual operators:

December 26, 2013, the first batch: Audio communication, repeatedly science and technology, music language, Xiang Lian letter, Beijing-east, north latitude communication, million net Zhi Cheng, di-Tong, sharing online, phone world, bus online

January 29, 2014, the second batch: Gome, Suning, Eschde, 35 interconnection, Suzhou snail, the medium-term group, the Yangtze River era, far-special communications

August 25, 2014, the third batch: Everest information, ZTE, Ufida, the Chinese postal century, Century interconnection, Silver Shing Electronics

November 21, 2014, the fourth batch: Red Bean Group, star American Cinema, Unity Information (Youku Video), Qingdao Day Shun (Haier), green cow software, millet technology, Zhengzhou Jie (Foxconn), 263 network

December 18, 2014, the fourth instalment: Hainan HNA, Lenovo FM, Guangdong Evergrande and Communications, Qingdao Fung Letter communications, Phoenix assets, Shenzhen Ping An communication, E-commerce, Peng Dr.