Project

Methods

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Management

and

Research

Table of Contents
1.

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 5th 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 customers 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 its 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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