Monopoly makes you boring

IT IS yet another classic of Expo Comm down in Argentina. The exhibition often referred to as the "largest technology show in South America" always has local incumbent telecomms Telecom and Telefonica as its 'macro sponsors'. But money can't buy them love.

They have the largest booths. They also feature the highest number of booth babes. But the booths are always empty modern spaces, with the booth babes and company representatives wandering around like trying to find their souls.

See, when you have split a country in two and enjoy a local loop monopoly on POTS and ADSL each on its geographic region, you don't have to worry much about competition stealing your local loop subscribers by offering exciting new services.

They should implement crowd control systems

These booths are a monumental waste of money, -if you ask me - but given the incumbents' share of the market, I guess it's their way of saying "who's the daddy?" to the smaller players.

Despite the command of the POTS, broadband and mobile sectors by Telecom and Telefonica, once again all the buzz and excitement seemed to be elsewhere.

Telefonica's booth was as dull. Telecom tried a giant replica of a cell phone with a woman posing as someone from France, with an Eiffel Tower backdrop behind her, trying to convince passers that she was in France, and to have a little chat. She would yell for hours at a time in an annoying mix of French and Spanish "hello? do you want to speak with me? I'm in France..." that sort of stuff. A few unfortunate visitors fell into the trap from time to time, which actually pleased the rest of us around the booth as the woman would stop her annoying routine while she pretended to listen to the caller.

The whole idea was to promote Personal's -Telecom's mobile operator- 3G services including video conference calls. The next day, I passed by Telecom's booth and this time the same annoying loud actress was set against what looked like an airport background, and speaking in half-Spanish half-Portuguese babbling something about Brazil. Sheesh!

The only area where Telecom managed to attract a crowd was by installing a handful of PCs and let people browse the interweb from the show floor for free, as a means of promoting its Arnet ADSL ISP.

Telecom Argentina's booth last year. Equally "crowded".

But they shouldn't confuse that utilitarian relationship with true love. Most of the visitors to the exhibition probably have broadband already, so it's not like they have to go to Expo Comm to learn about Telecom's ADSL. I speculate that the reason they managed to attract eight to ten people at once to their internet terminals was that Wi-fi seemed to be down everywhere else so Telecom's booth was one of the few places you could browse the interweb.

Customers loving their incumbent telcos is something I've never, ever seen. In every country around the world people seem to hate their former PTT and/or local loop monopoly with a passion. µ