Project Management and Research

Methods

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Table of Contents1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................................3

2. PART A- Market Research....................................................................................................................3

2.1 Market Research and Alternative strategies for Future...............................................................4

2.2 Factors influencing the decline of Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd..........................................6

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1. Introduction

Mobile communications market in Tanzania and a wide growth was observed in terms of number

of emerging operators over the market and number of subscribers as well since a decade. There

are almost 8 licensed mobile communication companies and 6 out of them are active at the

operations side. As per the recent survey, it is recorded that there are almost 14 million voice

subscribers and the key operational companies include Vodacom, TIGO, Zantal, Benson, Zain,

TIGO and TTCL. TIGO (Mobitel) is the first company to start the operations in Tanzania and as

per the one of the recent reports Tanzania is the second largest mobile communication market

with a penetration rate of 11% over East Asia and the respective rate clearly indicates that the

scope of future growth against telecommunication is very high. Thus in this context, a case with

Tanzania Telecommunication LTD is considered for the past, present and future market analysis

and the main aim of the current report is to study the required market strategies, research

methods and project management issues in improving the corresponding strategies. There few

critical issues identified from the case study of Tanzania Telecommunications LTD against the

implementation of strategic telecommunication and project management and they are explained

and discussed in detail and given as below

2. PART A- Market Research

Tanzania Telecommunications LTD is assumed to be a trending mobile and telecommunication

service provider in Tanzania and invested $300m to get one of the four licenses and an additional

investment of $1.5 billion is made to build the required infrastructure and market in Tanzania

and launched its operations in the year 2008. Since then ample it has occupied market share till

2010 at an average value of 28.9 and later drop in the share value is observed since 2011 and the

value is only 19.8 in the year 2013, where the 5 th quarter results are reduced by 9.2%. These

figures clearly shows a clear decline over the market position and thus in this context, top level

management had decided to replace the key department like Marketing and Head of Sales.

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Taking the position of better technical role over the organization, now the author need to analyze

the current market situations of Telecommunication across Tanzania and propose an effective

market research to set right the corresponding situations over the organization. Initial research

was based on questionnaire where the desired information was not obtained due to the lack of

knowledge levels of interview respondents and thus the questionnaire based approach is proved

to be a great failure from the corresponding senior managers.

2.1 Market Research and Alternative strategies for Future

Main goal of the current research is to propose an ample market research and evaluate the key

technical and market situations in telecommunication market in Tanzania and recommend the

alternative marketing and project management strategies in this context. In general to begin with

any sort of market research it is always required to focus past, present and future market

conditions and thus in this context, market situations, strengths, weakness, opportunities and

threats (SWOT) analysis of Tanzanian mobile and telecommunication market is studied and the

corresponding findings are applied to the Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd to propose the

desired and better future strategies and the respective discussion is as given below

Tanzania telecommunication market is proved to be a promising environment to start off and

promote the corresponding and mobile and telecommunication services. Most of the international

telecommunication market leaders have the proposal of penetrating into Tanzania market due to

the level of strengths and opportunities, still with the same level of threats and weaknesses and

from the analysis of back fall of few of the popular operators, there is a continuous Tanzanian

market study with respect to SWOT analysis. With the case of Tanzanian Telecommunications

Ltd and from the market financial position from the year 2008 to 2013, it is clear the impact of

market threats and weaknesses is high against the downfall of the organization.

Strengths: Since the year 2008, Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd is proved to be the market

leader and the main strength identified in this context is the strongest customer base in Tanzania

and had the strongest position in terms of financial leverage and the capability to drive and steer

the respective market direction. Initial risks with penetration are handled successfully by

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Tanzania Telecommunications Ltd and thus proved to be largest market shareholder in

telecommunication and mobile market.

Weaknesses: Sluggish and varying economic conditions in Tanzania are the main weakness of

Tanzanian market, where two-third of the supported and third party service providers from the

respective region. Worst economic conditions affected the revenue generation factors of

Tanzania as well and the overall usage of mobile phones is reduced a lot as in a part of saving the

overall expenses. Competition within the market and lack of corresponding strategies is another

important weakness identified with the case of Tanzania Telecommunications Ltd, where the

overall scenarios in the emerging markets have changed a lot.

Opportunities: There are many opportunities with respective to telecommunication market in

Tanzania and primary among them include lower competition from the other service providers

and availability of technologies like 3G, 4G and LTE. All these long term opportunities are

considered against the overall market investments LTE coverage and Telco plans are the main

opportunities in Tanzanian telecommunication market.

Threats: Market situations in Tanzania are the main threats in this context. It is proved that

Tanzania has almost 30% of the subscribers and thus the scope growth in terms of latest and

sophisticated technologies is another potential threat in this context. Another important threat for

the mobile and telecommunication market in Tanzania is uncertain regulatory climate, where the

corresponding regulations and ever changing government telecom policies are also considered in

this context.

From the above SWOT analysis it is clear that, telecommunications market has declined a lot

since year 2011 and also affected the overall business value of Tanzania Telecommunications

Ltd, where a parallel increase in mobile market is observed.

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2.2 Factors influencing the decline of Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd

From a detailed analysis of telecommunication and mobile market conditions in Tanzania, it is

evaluated that, there is a significant decline over the fixed line sector and tremendous growth

over mobile communication sector. The key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in

this context are analyzed and from the respective analysis it is clear that the economic and

varying market conditions of Tanzania are the main threats those contribute towards overall

decline of the fixed telecommunication market. Competition from the private sector is another

factor that can be discussed in this context, where since 2011, Tanzanian government had

reformed the existing telecom policies and reforms, by which the entire telecommunication

strategies are changed and reduced the market penetration strategies. Traffic, import taxes and

taxes on telecom equipment and telephone facilities offered by various service providers are

tuned to a big burden on both operators and investors. New regulatory regime of Tanzania has

increased the scope of foreign mobile operators and thus the internal competitive forces also

considered as one of the key factors over the current discussion.

Latest and sophisticated mobile broadband services like 3G, 4G and LTE have completely driven

away the mobile and telecommunication market and the companies who were unable to cope-up

the customer demands against these services went down across the leaning telecommunication

market graph. Thus restless nature of the competitors in providing the latest technology and

inability of the existing telecommunication and mobile service providers like Tanzania

Telecommunication Ltd added to the overall decline in market share ever since 2011. With the

evolution of 3G mobile broadband services, the overall internet services are also increased a lot

in Tanzania and thus most of the existing mobile subscribers are migrating towards 3G and LTE

services.

ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) sector in Tanzania is very flexible and

liberal and thus in this context, overall competitive forces over the mobile and cellular services

and a rapid growth is recorded in the fields like radio paging, data communications and the

respective internet services. M-banking and mobile money transfer services are another potential

mobile services offered by the latest penetrates over the mobile and telecommunication market,

where the respective services made the subscribers to shift their connections to the advanced

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services, since when a drastic decline of market share of Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd is

noticed. All the mentioned changes were clearly observed since 2009 and the impact and damage

was observed by the year 2011.

Revolutionary market changes were observed during this period and even the statistics given

over the case study also proved the same. National fiber backbone network has undergone lot of

changes during its first phase as imposed by Tanzanian Government, where millions of

population is connected with the corresponding centralized architecture and latest mobile

broadband service providers. All the service providers and operators, who were unable to meet

the respective services, were behind the race of market share acquisition, where the current

organization Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd is assumed to be one among them. Domestic

capital and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are encouraged over the political environment of

Tanzania and thus the growth of telecommunication and mobile market improved the scope of

improvement and a continuous growth and modernization is observed in this context.

Competition from the ever increasing operators is the main factor that is effecting overall

business growth of the small mobile operators in Tanzania. Both leased and dedicated broadband

services are available across Tanzania, where most of the small mobile operators purely depend

on leased line in this context from the major service providers like Sastal brand. Whenever the

bandwidth demand from customer’s increases directly for the core service providers like Sastal,

overall bandwidth supply and inputs to the corresponding leased clients like Tanzania

Telecommunication Ltd is reduced and the overall services are affected a lot and it’s proved

from the case study analysis. Most of the small mobile operators purely depend on CDMA

services, where the current trends have already moved to GMS, 3G, 4G and LTE networks. From

one of the recent surveys conducted on telecommunication and mobile market of Tanzania, few

interesting facts were noticed and they are considered to be the main limitations and factors

influenced the downfall of Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd market

Tanzanian Telecom industry value and volume is in par with the global telecom industry

and from the SWOT analysis done it is clear that, there were many challenges and threats

when compared to strengths and opportunities

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Varying economic and technological conditions in Tanzania are considered to be

potential barriers to the overall growth and market penetration strategies of Tanzania

Telecommunication Ltd.

Competition from major telecom player like Deutsche Telekom, AT&T and other is also

a strong factor influenced the downfall of Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd.

Business conditions of Telecom sector in Tanzania are proved to be auto review and from

the ARPU analysis it is clear that, fixed line telecom sector in Tanzania is dyeing with the

advent of latest mobile technologies like 3G, 4G and LTE networks

Lack of proper resource, customer and project management is another potential threat

observed in case of Tanzania Telecommunication Ltd, where the respective organization

failed in few key areas to satisfy the customer demands against latest broadband services

Underestimation of small operators is another downfall associated issue of Tanzania

Telecommunication Ltd, where most of the small operators purely explored the entire

business value against offering high speed broadband and internet services and thus a

sever competitive environment is created over the mobile and telecommunication market

of Tanzania

Improper resource utilization and weekly planned project activities are the other factors

contributed to the downfall of the organization over mobile and telecommunication

market of Tanzania and this context, where due to liberal market conditions most of the

small companies imposed their mark over the destination market

From the entire analysis of the factors influenced the decline of Telecomm market of Tanzania

Telecommunication Ltd in Tanzania, it is clear that overall business graph can be improved by

making a clear differentiation among useful and worthless mobile and telecommunication

services and the corresponding discussion is given in below section.

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