"Citycell" a Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited was one of the fastest growing company founded in 1989. A good amount of investments from Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunication Ltd came in 1990. By 1993, the company was renamed Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd, with the brand name Citycell.
At the beginning of their journey, citycell used niche market of the richest segment of the society who might use the mobile phone as a luxury item. At that particular time, citycell hold a strong brand image in the market. Utilizing that image Citycell was the first telecom company which connected cox's bazar to rest of the world. Besides, in terms of adopting CDMA technology in the sub-continent & establishing the first private wireless network, citycell was the first ever telecom company. Until Grammenphone & Aktel entered the market with an attractive offer citycell charged the premium price to its target customer. But with the emergence of Grammenphone & Aktel, citycell brought down their price from BDT 150000 in 1993 to BDT 15000 around the year 2000.
The Reasons Behind Citycell's Failure
Gradually the company was losing its mass subscribers due to failure to meet the demand of the consumer.
Moreover, it was difficult to survive for CDMA set with high call rates since consumers were always looking for cheap call rates. Citycell introduced an extensive variety of offers and bundles to its subscribers. Sadly, general subscribers in Bangladesh favored GSM to CDMA. In this way, from the earliest starting point, the organization was not reacting to target users. Handset issues were likewise an issue: to utilize the CDMA network, subscribers needed to utilize a CDMA-empowered handset. But unfortunately, CDMA handsets with smartphone attributes were not available in the market.
Moreover, lack of visionary leadership, institutional corruption and failure to bring investment have got Bangladesh’ first mobile-operator in huge trouble, said one of the former top-level executives of citycell. Although the CEO of citycell "Mahbub Chowdhury" denied the allegation of industry corruption.
However, for each & every company "Marketing Strategy" is the core part to drive the company to the path of success. Underestimating this truth would be a cause of failure.
written by:Aminul Islam
At the beginning of their journey, citycell used niche market of the richest segment of the society who might use the mobile phone as a luxury item. At that particular time, citycell hold a strong brand image in the market. Utilizing that image Citycell was the first telecom company which connected cox's bazar to rest of the world. Besides, in terms of adopting CDMA technology in the sub-continent & establishing the first private wireless network, citycell was the first ever telecom company. Until Grammenphone & Aktel entered the market with an attractive offer citycell charged the premium price to its target customer. But with the emergence of Grammenphone & Aktel, citycell brought down their price from BDT 150000 in 1993 to BDT 15000 around the year 2000.
The Reasons Behind Citycell's Failure
The Reasons Behind Citycell's Failure
But it couldn't survive a long time in the competitive telecom market due to some mismanagement & for adopting the wrong decision. Understanding customer's actual need & demand was the most important part to survive in the market. Therefore recognizing their need & to make their company more profitable except citycell all other telecom company applied for 3G license in order to combine wireless communication with multimedia such as the internet. The new technology was able to handle music, video, images and other media formats, and provide a wide range of services including web browsing, conference calls, and e-commerce. However,citycell didn't introduce 3G network service at that time while other operator had already entered into 3G network. It creates customer dissatisfaction & persuaded them to switch to another telecom operator.Gradually the company was losing its mass subscribers due to failure to meet the demand of the consumer.
Moreover, it was difficult to survive for CDMA set with high call rates since consumers were always looking for cheap call rates. Citycell introduced an extensive variety of offers and bundles to its subscribers. Sadly, general subscribers in Bangladesh favored GSM to CDMA. In this way, from the earliest starting point, the organization was not reacting to target users. Handset issues were likewise an issue: to utilize the CDMA network, subscribers needed to utilize a CDMA-empowered handset. But unfortunately, CDMA handsets with smartphone attributes were not available in the market.
Moreover, lack of visionary leadership, institutional corruption and failure to bring investment have got Bangladesh’ first mobile-operator in huge trouble, said one of the former top-level executives of citycell. Although the CEO of citycell "Mahbub Chowdhury" denied the allegation of industry corruption.
However, for each & every company "Marketing Strategy" is the core part to drive the company to the path of success. Underestimating this truth would be a cause of failure.
written by:Aminul Islam
