Omantel’s recent history tells a story about rapid growth. Oman’s population, according to Google is roughly 2.8 million people; Omantel, according to its most recent financial statements, claims a mobile subscriber base of 2.3 million, which has grown by 13 percent in just the past year. Of the 300,000 mobile customers Omantel added in that time, 270,000 are pre-paid. This has actually resulted in mobile ARPU which has declined by 5.5%. That said, this delta seems more likely a representation of demographic shifts as the company broadens its customer base to include a large portion of the population. It currently generates 62.5% of all mobile revenue in Oman.
Omantel is also experiencing explosive growth in its fixed line business, particularly with regard to Internet access. Its ARPU there has skyrocketed almost 250 percent since 2008 and 14 percent in the past year. The subscriber base is relatively small – 56,000 customers – but it grew 23% since Q1 2011. Impressively, Omantel also demonstrated 56 percent growth in mobile broadband subscriptions, with 375,000 paying customers; add in those with pay-as-you-go access to mobile broadband and Omantel has created an addressable market of over a million customers for the service.
Given the growth it is experiencing and the diversification of its customer base, Omantel’s decision to adopt customer analytics makes sense. According to the Aito Technologies press release (http://www.aitotechnologies.com/news/omantel-selects-aito-for-customer-experience-analytics/) that announced this action, Omantel intends to use analytics to identify and analyze market trends and segments; measure market share and growth; study customer and service usage patterns to combat churn and drive campaigns; and to monitor network statistics like utilization and device information. This adds an element of further business maturation to Omantel’s growth story and continues the global trend of domain-specific analytics adoption – particularly customer-facing – that persists across the communications industry.
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