In the evening of November 11th, Tencent released 1.0 version of Wechat Address Book, with the "HD free calls" slogan and extensively making advertisements. In just one night, Wechat Address Book becomes popular among friend circles in the Wechat, quickly becomes one of the popular search items in iTunes and ranks in the first place.
In the morning of November 12th, because of the overwhelming registers, the servers of Tencent even become congested, Wechat Address Book said in an announcement: there are some problems in functions of login in, registration, SMS verification and others.
However, the not-so-perfect opening didn’t dilute the longing for "free calls" of the users, countless people raise with this question: does the free call era really come? What are the three major operators doing?"
Several telecom operator executives who received media’s interview said, "the calls maybe not free. But it has become a trend to change from the traditional voice pattern to traffic data based mode." Even so, the cost of the calls will be greatly reduced. "Ideally, 1 minute phone call only consumes 100K traffic data, calculated in the packages, the cost is only 1 cent, only 5%-10% of the general voice calls." An operator executive calculated like this.
For the operators, this means a loss of 90% of the voice service income. But surprisingly, the operators’ response to the potential threaten of Wechat Address Book is calm.
The impact is not "ferocious"
Wechat Address Book is not a fresh App. The telephone dialing technology through Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G network is known as VoIP, the most successful player of which is Skype. Before the launch of Wechat Address Book, voice call function has emerged in mobile phone apps like Wechat and QQ, the launched Wechat Address Book takes the voice call as an independent business, the operation is more convenient, and are related with address books and Wechat friends, which occupies a 500 million Wechat user base.
With the effect of these apps, the overall voice call time reduces gradually. In the case of China Mobile, the subscriber MOU (average monthly call duration) was 525 minutes, 512 minutes and 486 minutes in 2011 to 2013, respectively, with a corresponding voice call incomes of CNY 364 billion, 368 billion and 355.6 billion, which declined with time.
An executive of China Mobile said jokingly: "the reduced annual income is about CNY 10 billion. Compared with the overall income of hundreds of billions, this change of income has no point and there is no need to mention. The impact of OTT is not as fierce as the outside hyped."
In 2013, the emergence of Wechat caused the first decline of SMS usage in China Mobile, which declined from 744.5 billion to 734.1 billion ones. In last year, China Mobile has attempted to charge Wechat, which caused the eruption of "Wechat fee" event and triggered months of discussion in the industry. But finally, the "Wechat fee" resulted in nothing and is never mentioned again. China Mobile’s SMS income decreased from CNY 44.2 billion to 41.3 billion. Similarly, "only a loss of CNY2.9 billion, in fact, you don’t even feel it."
"Mobile operators have no good solutions for OTT. It is true for Wechat, as well as for the Wechat Address Book." As the well-known Telecom analyst, Vice Chief Engineer of Sichuan Planning and Design Institute Cheng Dejie sees it, Wechat Address Book can be seen as a milestone event, " its meaning is this: OTT changes the previous hiding attitude, begins to stand opposite to the traditional business openly, and carries out positive attack and replace the traditional business."
However, the loss at sunrise maybe gained at sunset.
In 2013, the SMS and voice call income accumulatively decreased by CNY16.3 billion in China Mobile, but its mobile traffic data income grew 38.8 billion, which increased from CNY66.5 billion to 105.3 billion. The growth of income makes up for the loss of traditional income.
The deputy general manager of China Mobile system supporting department Ning Yu commented: "the launched Wechat Address Book by Tencent is within our expectation. The replacement of voice call by traffic data is the trend, if others don't do this, telecom operators will do it themselves." What operators need to be concerned about is this: in the long-term consideration, whether the growth of traffic data business will outperform the decline of traditional business?
Fortunately, compared to traditional business, VoIP business is still largely imperfect. The three major operators spend hundreds of billions in the construction, improve and timely maintain of the network, in order to keep multi experiences of nonstop and smooth of traditional voice calls. While basically only software can support the VoIP business, which is completely not proportional to its input. The large difference of investment determined the difference of business experience.
The users of Wechat Address Book may find that the quality of voice calls can be guaranteed in fixed network environment, but if the caller's location changes, when the mobile phone network environment changes from WIFI to 3G, 2G and other mobile network, or when network congestion occurs, the call will break of for 5-10 seconds, or even directly hang up. Moreover, compared with the traditional telephone service, the Wechat Address Book can’t automatically show up in the screen when calls come, only displays through the "banner", which needs a few more steps to handle than the conventional operation mode.
Cheng Dejie told the reporters: "at the current stage, Wechat Address Book will gradually have some user market, but the process will be slow, and it cannot replace the operator's services."
At present, China Mobile is testing its VoLTE business in the 4G network which covers more than 300 cities nationwide. In the global, about 10 operators such as Verizon, AT&T and NTT have launched VoLTE services, China Mobile plans to realize full commercial of VoLTE services in 2015.