More than half of the trial, virtual operators encounter a cold current

Operator virtual operator

Only a year into the pilot period, the virtual operators are experiencing bursts of cold. Since March, the music language closed the virtual resale brand in Beijing, "Miao more" flagship store, Zhejiang repeatedly technology also internal restructuring, the dissolution of the national operations team. At the same time, Huaxiang, the phone world, Gome, Eschde, and other senior executives responsible for resale operations frequently leave.
Operators

Only a year into the pilot period, the virtual operators are experiencing bursts of cold.

Since March, the music language closed the virtual resale brand in Beijing, "Miao more" flagship store, Zhejiang repeatedly technology also internal restructuring, the dissolution of the national operations team. At the same time, Huaxiang, the phone world, Gome, Eschde, and other senior executives responsible for resale operations frequently leave.

The virtual operator suffered a painful period and felt the pain. As a result, many enterprises began to break the wrist, towards the international market and other more vertical market direction, trying to get out of the trough.

Technology "broken wrist" turned to the international market

"The company just canceled the provincial and municipal branch of the operation, not to quit the virtual operator industry." "In response to the rumours of the dissolution of the team," said Chen Ping, the technology president, "they are now in the internal staffing structure adjustment, the original responsibility for the national provinces and cities to put the number of the team was canceled, focus on the overall transfer to the overseas tourism market." "The whole industry has been a cold spell, the most crucial to the virtual business is to be in the product, the market has a choice." ”

In the first year of the pilot period, the entire virtual operators face the market environment is not ideal. With the operator billing system docking, its own boss system construction, tariff zero upside down and so on all kinds of problems, has been plagued by various enterprises, as early into the resale industry repeatedly technology is no exception.

Chen Ping told reporters that giving up the national team is a broken wrist. After getting a licence, repeatedly technology will put tens of millions of funds to build a billing system, and the introduction of mobile phone recharge, Yiwu E-commerce retail combination of products, 4 months time to the public customer market accumulated 70,000 supposedly code. But they soon found that this is not the best direction-although the technology has 1.03 million of huge offline channels, covering 16 provinces and cities nationwide, but in each province, the city to register and set up a subsidiary operation, with the help of offline channel number, this model has gone the way of the basic operators, and channels, Physical stores are far less competitive than the three major operators.

"Our earliest transformation, now seems to be the right direction." Lin Hai-min, vice president of science and Technology, told the IT times, the current technology has been with Hong Kong 3HK (and Hutchison Telecom operators) and other overseas operators to provide outbound tourism to the "UU Companion Brigade" Global roaming Internet business, which is the first domestic to international market virtual operator products. For the user, only need a 170th number, no need to change the number can be used overseas operators traffic length. At the same time, it can provide local access to foreign visitors, call services.

Data show that the number of outbound tourism in China reached 117 million in 2014, while Hangzhou also has 5 million of foreign visitors each year. Large-scale arrivals and departures have also boosted demand for international communications services, a market segment that is undoubtedly a huge cake for virtual operators.

"Repeatedly technology has been in and T, Orange, NTT Docomo, Korea Telecom and other international mainstream operators contact, in traffic, voice to reach settlement cooperation." "Lin Hai-min told reporters that its primary goal is to open the Asian market and the Middle East market in Japan and South Korea, the introduction of Low-cost 170th number, to solve the past international roaming costs are high," the future may also seek capital operations, acquisition or merger of foreign virtual operators, the main international market. ”

The first trial and error cost of senior management turnover

At the beginning of the license issuance, the imaginary merchants had made millions of annual salary from the three major operators to dig a large number of senior people as a resale business trader, but now many bosses have two degrees job-hopping.

At the end of last year, Eschde issued a bulletin confirming that the senior executives responsible for reselling business Lu Paoping (formerly the product director of China Unicom) and director Zhanglinmio (formerly the Director of Customer division of China Unicom's Anhui company) were leaving after only half a year in office.

Another resale company, Huaxiang, also encountered the same situation. After obtaining a licence last year, China-Xiangyu Unicom has dug in a large number of senior executives, including former Vice President Li Gang of China Unicom, Wang, deputy general manager of China Unicom's information and E-commerce division, Song Limei, deputy general manager of the marketing department Jiang, deputy general manager of the Department of Electronic Commerce, Lin Jianfeng, etc. But Wang has been in office for only one year, and many other people have gone to the wrong time.

According to people familiar with the matter, the same period of separation of senior executives and the phone world Mobile Sales President Jiangweiping (formerly China Unicom Wenzhou Company general manager), Gome Group Vice President Liu Chenming (formerly director of China Unicom Research Institute) and others. These signs suggest that this wave of job-hopping, brought about by virtual operators, is emerging as a return to the tide.

"The development of virtual operators to the present, facing the double pressure of talent and capital." "China virtual Operator Alliance Secretary-General Shong said that the traditional operators in the senior management in the switch to virtual operators, the formation of the team's management model, operating ideas, corporate culture and most of the same as the basic operators, the business is still the traditional package, the model innovation is insufficient, And some of the company's strategic cost and capital budget is limited and difficult to place, the double factor induced this wave two degrees turnover.

In fact, according to the China Institute of Information and Communication estimates, the resale of enterprises need to develop at least 800,000 users, in order to achieve positive cash flow in 3-5 years, to achieve cumulative profit within 5-7 years. At the same time, due to the domestic operator's terminal subsidy, channel Commission and other cost factors, means that the resale enterprises want to reach the end of the pilot period of 1 million users, at least need to prepare 1~2 billion cash flow reserves, further expand the brand even to 5~10 billion capital guarantee.

For 42 licensed virtual operators, the resale business is to continue to invest in the scale of the economy, in the pilot run phase is bound to pay high cost of trial and error, the outbreak of the two-degree turnover is also a reflection of the development of the problem.

"At present, 2/3 of enterprises have set up operating billing platform and the launch of the resale brand, the home almost all pay about 20 million yuan operating costs." Shong said to the IT Times reporter, resale products should be the use of communications services to enhance the main business value added to achieve the main product diversification and competitiveness of the promotion, but at present most of the virtual operators go into the wrong, just in the package design to do a variety of micro-innovation, "by the traditional operators to fencing design business, Under the inertial thinking or to sell the package mainly, this kind of innovation can only push the operator's internal reform, but can not change the whole business model of resale business. ”

Agent card-raising phenomenon highlights the need for transformation of channels

At the beginning of 2014, the China Institute of Information and Communication (ICT) had predicted that, as of the end of the pilot period by the end of 2015, the virtual merchants would reach 50 million, accounting for 3% of the overall mobile communications industry. However, from the current public data, 42 virtual operators to open cards to activate the user reached about 2 million, distance from the number is still a big gap.

"According to the original and traditional operators signed the guarantee Agreement, the scale of the commitment of more than 5 million users, small size of the commitment of hundreds of thousands of users, but a year pilot period down almost no one completed." The overall market environment is not optimistic, the end of 2015 is expected to have more than 10 million of new users, that is, the entire market size of 12 million users. "The Chinese Institute of Information and communications experts judge.

It is noteworthy that some of the virtual operators in order to one-sided pursuit of user development scale, and even appeared a large number of agents to raise cards in the chaos.

A person familiar with the matter told the IT Times reporter, many virtual operators from the operator to apply for the number of resources, to the offline agent channel distribution, but the channel only need to pay 1~1.5 yuan/year cost, you can easily raise the size of a large number of resources, And this type of 170th code is commonly found in a variety of card number wholesale market. "Virtual operators only need to reach the 50~60% rate of access to the new section of resources, but many card users are ARPU low value of the false users, leading to a large number of resources waste, really want to develop the user's virtual business can get the number of resources are limited, long-term will inevitably form a vicious circle. ”

"Virtual operators cannot use offline as a major distribution channel. Shong to reporters that offline agents, stores and other entity channels for virtual operators is only a supplementary link, can be used as after-sales service, brand display to promote, its focus should be placed on the network and other online channels to create O2O-type communication services, "once the cart before the horse, will be the focus of marketing online agents and other channels, It is inevitable that such chaos will arise in pursuit of rewards and user size. Now the competent units of the real-name real-name supervision is also increasing, this short-term users of the practice will inevitably have no market. "(Li Dong, the author of this article, authorized by the It Times Titanium Media release)

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