An Open Letter to Digicel Fiji Executives

Over the last few months, my displeasure with your good company has been building up and has reached boiling point now. I am totally discontented and pissed off. Getting my point? No?

Digicel Fiji, you guys have turned out to be a total disappointment.

Now let me share my disappointment. But before that, WTF were you guys thinking when you decided to enter the Fiji mobile phone market? Just because you thought of yourself as liberators of telecommunication monopoly, you assumed that the people of Fiji would come running towards you with garlands and roses and embrace your company as the One.

Don’t you executives watch television or read news. You guys have to be from Jupiter to not know George Bush and how he had the same perception when he decided to invade Iraq. Didn’t you guys take a cue from that?

And then, you guys decided to do this mega launch using Sean Kingston. Nothing wrong with that. But if you guys had done more research about Fiji, then you must have heard about another guy called Tupeni Baba who resigned from Fiji Labour Party and formed New Labour Party. His first major move; to hold an open air concert with lots of singing. Nobody took his party seriously after that. Get it now?

So many precedents one of which by the President of worlds most powerful nation and yet you guys don’t learn a thing.

My point is this, are you executives head so deep up the ass that only mistakes you are going to learn from is yours and yours alone?

Now back to sharing my disappointment.

The year is 1998 and Vodafone launches its prepaid service, Fastfone. And I acquired one of it, the size of the handset guaranteed to catch even a fly’s attention. But that’s fine, after all mobile phone back then was more about prestige anyway.

It’s only now that Vodafone has new slogan, ‘Power to You’ but back then, they had this slogan, ‘Make the most of Now’. And Vodafone took the meaning of that slogan to new heights. It charged $1.98 per minute for each call from this prepaid phones. When they realized that people found the rate exorbitant, Vodafone reviews the rate and advertises it at 99cents per unit, only this time each unit is 30 seconds. This rate was only for local calls. My blood vessels would bust if I start telling about their international rates.

So mobile phones started to be kept as a ‘receiving phone’ only and keypads locked and secured, lest some unexplained bodily movement unlocks the keypad and a call is accidentally made.That would have been a total disaster.

And telephones were used to make outgoing calls. Telecom Fiji decided to take advantage of this fact and started charging its customers for receiving a call from the mobile phone but eventually ceased with it. Now that’s a story for another time.

And this era of charging exorbitant rates continued for a very long time. Those were very dreadful and depressing times. And when you guys announced of your launch in Fiji, Vodafone started bringing down their rates. At times, thru the Commerce Commissions directive and at times, as part of its own shrewd strategic plan. We had started to love you guys even before you entered our lives. I had imagined it to eventually become a platonic love between us. What a disappointment that turned out to be is beyond expression.

Your entry into Fiji was so eagerly awaited by us, some with more expectation than others.

You guys claimed to have built a state-of-the-art

network and for the first time ever will provide Fijians with reliable nationwide coverage , superior 24/7 customer care, a wide range of state-of-the-art handsets, and first to market high-value services apart from providing over 95% coverage in Fiji. Impressive!

Who did your market research? And who prepared your IMC Plan. We are not really interested in your ‘Bigger and Better Network.’ Why didn’t you make your slogan about us, rather than about your infrastructure? Dudes, if you want us to appreciate you, then appreciate us instead of sending us a self-congratulatory message.

Incase you guys are wondering, what we really want is cheap rates 24/7 with lot of freebies. To date I have not seen your state-of-the-art handsets, so I will not dwell into it.

But your biggest mistake was claiming that you guys would be providing 95% coverage, without providing details on which 5% wasn’t covered. All it did was make everyone in Fiji think that they were part of the uncovered 5%.

Now on a more personal level, you guys have seriously let me down even in front of my mother in law. I had such a vigorous argument with her vouching for you guys and even made an audacious attempt to convert her from Vodafone to Digicel. Only thing that has eventuated from that warlike argument is her regular taunts on her 'superior judgment and foresight.'

For this there can be no redemption from you. You guys totally failed me on the ultimate battle ground. For that I have not even added Digicel to my spell check.

Seriously, tell me what sort of competition were you guys expecting? Didn’t you guys think for a second that Vodafone has setup the fielding, and waiting to bowl you guys out. Did you guys not realize that failure was not an option? Especially since it’s going to have such a huge effect on the people of Fiji. Now let me enlighten on this.

Once Vodafone cripples and destroys Digicel, there would not be another mobile phone company in a very long time which would dare come to Fiji. And within that time Vodafone would screw us on the mobile internet platform just the way it did on the mobile calls platform.

You guys would place us in serious crap if you buckle and wind up. The prolonged drought in the Western division has proven that prayers don’t work; otherwise we would have launched a massive prayer campaign thru a combination of havans and crusades for Digicels prosperous existence.

By the way, which one of your executives had this brilliant plan to start with ‘Talk for 5 minutes and the mobile calls rest of the day are free’ campaign? Did you guys recruited this person recently or did you just unfreezed your own brain which you were keeping in a cryogenic chamber hidden in Papeetee?

If only had you guys started this sort of promotion earlier, things would have been much better for you. For one I would have still been your customer instead of exchanging your SIM card for a Vodafone Sim Card with $50 free talk time.

And that reminds me that when you guys launched, you offered $75 free talk time. Well geniuses, we in Fiji don’t need those sorts of things just on a single occasion. You have to give it to us on a regular basis. We consider 25th of every month a Christmas day.

Now one of my bigger disappointments is in the fact that you closed your Nadi Office. Brilliant!

All you did was send the enemy a very clear message that you guys were retreating. Once again who did your feasibility study and who prepared your strategic development plan? You guys have seriously made matters worse for yourself. We are holding our breath because our impression is that you guys are taking your last.

And to make matters even much worse, your sponsored Fiji Sevens team is not exactly the winning team that you would have liked them to be.

Your existence and success in Fiji is a matter of national interest. I will come on board once I know that the freebies you are giving now are not one off, but something you will give on a regular basis. Otherwise two things will happen. Firstly, Vodafone will have a new slogan, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, and secondly I would write an open letter to Denis O'Brien and recommend that he cut your balls off.