Shield on shield

An advertising billboard led to a tariff war between Altel and Tele2 in Kazakhstan

Mobile operator Altel has launched a new tariff in Kazakhstan called Super 1000+ with cheap calls within the network and a fixed monthly subscription fee. Some time later, the Kazakh division of Tele2 announced the introduction of a similar tariff and advertised it with a billboard placed next to the billboard of its competitors.

The confrontation between telecommunications companies that began in this way within a few days resulted in a real corporate war, in which the opposing sides managed to use everything - from reduced tariff rates and critical publications on the pages of popular bloggers to trolling on social networks and massive bot attacks.

Whose super is better

The appearance of the Super 1000+ tariff from Altel became known in early August. The company, the only one in Kazakhstan with a state license to use LTE frequencies, offered its subscribers free calls within the network and a tariff of 3 tenge (1 tenge = 22 kopecks) per minute for calls to numbers of other operators. The subscription fee for using Super 1000+ was 990 tenge (about 220 rubles) per month.

On October 2, an almost identical tariff - “Super” - appeared at Tele2. Calls and SMS within the network were also free, but the cost of a minute of conversation with subscribers of other companies was 2 tenge. The monthly subscription fee at the same rate as Altel was 990 tenge.

However, the main difference between “Super” and Super 1000+ was not the difference of one tenge, but the absence of additional restrictions. The rates offered by Altel were valid only for calls of up to 180 minutes per day to landline numbers and up to 100 minutes per month to the networks of other operators. After exceeding the limit, you could pay from 3 to 11 tenge per minute of connection (depending on where the call is made).

Tele2 decided to accompany the announcement of the new tariff with an original advertising campaign. At the request of the operator, a billboard was made that emphasized the “obvious advantages” of the tariff in comparison with the proposals of competitors. The structure was installed on a small truck parked directly under the Altel shield. At the same time, in the Kazakh Tele2 community on VKontakte, a competition was announced to find a car with advertising that appeared on the streets of Almaty. One of those who finds and photographs the shield was promised an iPhone 6.

Bloggers and bots

A message about the launch of the competition appeared on the social network on October 10, and the very next day on the Kazakh analogue of LiveJournal, blog hosting Yvision.kz, a devastating material about Tele2 was published. The author of the post was Yvision.kz editor Rustam Niyazov.

In the article entitled “ Tele2, you also need to be able to lose!” “Niyazov explained that he himself had been a subscriber of the company for a long time, but the advertising campaign against Altel unexpectedly forced him to pay attention to the advantages of competitors. In several paragraphs, the blogger describes in detail the advantages of the operator, which he himself does not use.

The blogger’s detailed description of Altel’s tariff offers led some users to assume that the blog post could be custom-made and represent an attempt by the company to somehow respond to Tele2’s advertising ploy.

This is a great post! Simply wonderful. One well-fed author gives instructions on how to sell communications correctly. But that’s okay, Mr. Niyazov wrote everything quite decently, professionally, like a blogger. After publication, the same well-fed commentators rushed to the post, and the heat began to set in. Hmm, everyone is measured by their monetized IMHA, the most beautiful thing is that everyone’s ears stick out. This is a great thread, thank you. Yvision.kz user

in the Altel group on VKontakte Simultaneously with Rustam Niyazov’s publication, a message appeared about the introduction of the “sensational” Super Smart tariff. In it, calls to all operators in Kazakhstan already cost 0 tenge per minute. In addition, the company promised to give away a Samsung Galaxy S5 phone among subscribers who connected to Super Smart.

The confrontation between providers continued in the blog of Mindaugas Ubartas, commercial director of the Kazakh division of Tele2. In response to Niyazov’s text, a company representative wrote : one creative billboard was enough to force competitors to reduce communication prices.

Separately, Ubartas also pointed out that state-owned Altel takes advantage of its proximity to power and is still the only company in the country operating in the LTE segment.

Only one operator has 4G, although all the others need to do to launch it is add three letters “LTE” to the resolution. But we don't complain - we work so that you pay less. We installed only one mobile billboard, and, as a result, prices for clients in the market decreased (what will happen when we launch TV advertising?). Mindaugas Ubartas, representative of Tele2 Kazakhstan

Later, Tele2, through its official public page on VKontakte, reported attacks on its accounts by unknown bots, linking their appearance with a recent advertising campaign with a billboard on a car. Without directly mentioning who might be the organizer of the attacks, the company published brief instructions for its subscribers on “how to expose a fake.”

Trolls in the manual

On October 15, Altel again announced changes to the terms of service for the “Super Smart” tariff, offering , in addition to free minutes, unlimited mobile Internet. Competitors did not ignore this fact. Having carefully studied the text of the Tele2 contract , I discovered that the advertised “unlimited” is provided only with traffic up to 3 gigabytes per month. The company used this fact for a new portion of Altel trolling, this time through Facebook.

On the same day, Tele2 released another new tariff, “Super+,” zeroing out the cost of all calls and SMS and introducing mobile Internet at 0 tenge when using up to 5 gigabytes of traffic monthly.

On October 16, the conflict between operators reached the top management of the companies. The Chairman of the Board of Kazakhtelecom (owns Altel) Kuanyshbek Yesekeev reposted a mocking picture on his Facebook , criticizing Tele2 for being proud of “low” tariffs.

Users in the comments had mixed reactions to the joke. Some of them began to reproach Altel for starting a tariff war with Tele2, within the framework of which the operator eventually “sank” to nasty things about competitors.

What an abomination this letter is. Mr. Esekeev, I’m sorry that such an intelligent person like you posts something like this on your page. It not only does not paint Kazakhtelecom and Altel, but causes a gag reflex. It shows the inconsistency of Altel’s position in this “tariff war” - there is nothing to cover, so they have sunk lower. And it's disgusting. I personally, as a consumer, need only one answer - tariffs, additional services - benefits, in a word. Alexey Alekseev, Facebook user

TJournal asked the management of Tele2 and Altel for comment on the conflict. At the time of writing this material, representatives of both operators did not respond to the editor’s request.

Trolling using a billboard placed next to competitors’ advertisements had previously been used by Tele2 representatives against another Kazakh operator, Kcell. In mid-September, the company decided to make fun of the company with a humorous advertisement on the roof of one of the residential buildings in Almaty.

At that time, however, it did not come to an open confrontation in the field of tariff policy. The Tele2 advertisement was promptly removed from the building, and Kcell management stated that they would contact the Kazakhstan Agency for Protection of Competition regarding the placement of the billboard.

for his assistance in preparing the material The editors would like to thank Anuar Dzhusupov .

#Article #Tele2 #Kazakhstan #social networks #mobile_Internet #communication_operators #Altel #cellular_communications_in_Kazakhstan #conflict_Altel_and_Tele2 #tariff_war_Altel_and_Tele2_in_Kazakhstan #tariffs_for_mobile_communications