"Re: Orange & Facebook"

From: Hisham MIJJOO <hishammijjoo_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 30 May 2015 22:01:39 +0400

*Hello, In a few days, Orange will allow free and unlimited access to
Facebook, for those who have subscribed to their packages, be it Prepaid[1]
or Postpaid[2]. I have some questions: 1. Do you think this is a good
thing? 2. Why is Orange choosing what should be free and what not for
us? 3. Can we call this free service from Orange a
"zero-rating[3][4]" service (joint market agreement)? 4. What if I
want zero-rating service for another app (e.g. FamilyWall, or Twitter,
etc), rather than Facebook? 5. Who is benefiting from this? Is Facebook
"sponsoring" this free internet to kill competition (from other social
networking services, or from startups rising)? 6. Is it in our
advantage? 7. What if they give (zero-rating) "preference" to
another service/application in the future (decided by them, and not us,
the users)? Will it be a disadvantage to local startups? Best
regards, Nadim Attari *

Well for a start a joint market agreement occurs when 2 or more companies
market each others' products towards the same customer...

Pros and cons depend on the agreement... however, depending on the
situation; if we are talking about online business, then it may cause great
trouble in the marketing field as those companies will market themselves...



Its usual business to have agreements like that. LinkedIn can have an
agreement with another company like emtel...



Same thing is happening to Google... Google lost some Search market share
to yahoo as yahoo has an agreement with Firefox to be their default search
engine...



*Should we prevent it / Will it kill competiton?*



yes and no... We cannot prevent someone doing business in any form (be it
legal of course)... however, there are regulations like the Competition Act
that should be consulted on the matter...



Competitors like Emtel have lots of competitive advantage over orange...

First and foremost Emtel focuses on service quality that attracts a
different target market and as far as I know Emtel is cheaper!



And Yeah.. it will kill some competition... What I may call useless
competition... those who are here 'pu fer bouku' and holds little market
share. And that's a good thing.



Innovation in business should be real in Mauritius and we do have some
great minds; unfortunately most are stuck in a box...



Those 'agreements' will push those minds to think out of the box.



Concerning entrepreneurs, competitive advantage should be innovated and
looked for elsewhere... I personally believe that competition will create
more and true entrepreneurs and promote further development...


Hope this helps and motivates...


*'Go for Gold'*


Regards,


Hisham
Received on Sat May 30 2015 - 18:01:53 PST