Since its launch in February 2003 CDMA2000 1X operator Hutchison-CAT Wireless Multimedia (Hutch) has been showing real promise as an industry competitor. In March 2004 the company announced plans to launch CDMA2000 1xEV-DO by Q3 2004. At the same time Hutch also launched a new service with promotional tariffs at half the rate of those offered by its GSM rivals. Prepaid call charges from Hutch range from THB 2.25 per minute to THB 1.50 per minute, depending on the value of the top-up card bought. This compares to market leader AIS' lowest call rate of THB 3.00 per minute and THB 5.00 per minute from DTAC
The cheap prepaid service alone should make it easy for the operator to beat its end of 2004 target of a million subscribers. Parent company Hutchison Whampoa has confirmed a revised figure for its Thai operation of approximately 339,000 subscribers at the end of 2003 (, ). The prepaid segment continues to out-perform postpaid growth in the Thai mobile market (there were 4.65 million prepaid net additions in 2003 compared to 124,350 postpaid net additions over the same period). Bangkok subscribers are notoriously sensitive to pricing when it comes to prepaid packages, which may lead to subscribers churning from rival GSM operators to the CDMA network. The network upgrade to 1xEV-DO which will allow Hutch to offer data services that require higher data speeds and will also give the operator the means to win more postpaid customers away from competitors.
As a result of industry-wide promotions, ostentatious consumption of high-speed mobile data services is fast becoming a mark of sophisticated youth culture in Thailand and Hutch has already positioned itself to capitalise on the trend. During its first nine months of operation, the company's advertising remained singularly focused on affluent young trend-setters, a segment that was broadened to include 'wannabes' through a series of promotional campaigns and 'two-for-one' handset offers.
Careful attention has also been given to network roll-out. Turning a weakness into a strength, the operator made sure that its limited concession (licence) area of Greater Bangkok (with roaming on CAT's CDMA-800 network for the rest of the country) was adequately covered before launching commercial operations, a simple enough strategy that nonetheless made a solid impression on the market. As a result, Hutch began 2004 with a small but satisfied following of comparatively affluent subscribers whose only real complaint with the company, judging from web board commentaries, was that they were locked into promotional packages that precluded the possibility of signing up for better Hutch deals.
The pending upgrade to 1xEV-DO will greatly enhance the operator's image as a cutting-edge communications service provider. With network speeds faster than anything GSM rivals can now muster, Hutch should be in a position to further upstage competitors with a range of new products and services. Since January 2004 Hutch has been offering a map-based geo-positioning service called 'Navi' that is based on Qualcomm's SnapTrack system. It has also been actively acquiring the rights to new content, including popular television programming. Meanwhile, efforts are already underway to promote handsets that can take advantage of high-speed network capabilities. In March 2004, for example, the company began marketing Telson's TDC-6610 , the only handset in the market with MPEG-4 video functionality.
