There's a lot of action happening in this segment, with cut throat competition between different brands. For inys stance, till last year, we had six brands with sufficient ur es to enter the club. This year, the number has dropped to esay five. Sify was unable to make it to the club this time. The aining players are the same, with no new addition. Overall, is only slight improvement in overall brand performance er tries across all the brands. It looks as if Airtel has been very of gressive in the market. It's overtaken all ls.uer brands in terms of current ownership, ot, mass. The brand pull situation is not as ce d as last year. Let's analyze analyze indine ual brands and see where they've reached.

Till last year, VSNL/Tata Indicom ruled the roost as far as top of mind recall, current to nership and future intent to purchase were ncerned, but this year is completely different. The most future ready brand this year is :he el, and it has left VSNL behind by a wide Iso prgin. The brand seems to have really oyrked hard to improve its position and reach ds. reo If it continues at this pace, then it will ely b the lion's share of the market pretty r in n. It could actually do much better if it improves upon its brand persuasion, because it's ley least persuasive of all. So, a lot of users can recall the brand name on top of their minds, but Airtel has not been able to leverage that and changing this into likelihood of purchase.



The brand pull situation of Airtel is better than that ofVSNL and BSNL. Airtel enjoys 66% brand loyalty, with only 14% ofthe ClOs saying that they're likely to shift to another brand. Interestingly, the number two spot has been occupied by MTNL, which comes as a surprise packet, because till last year, it was last on the future readiness index. MTNL is the most persuasive brand of the lot, and is second highest on the brand pull index. Its brand loyalty remains the lowest of the lot though, at 43%, with a whopping 45% of existing ClOs, who don't know which other brand to shift to. Hope fully, MTNL will cut across all the red tape and bureaucracy and try to tilt them in its favor.

VSNL's numbers have dropped significantly as compared to last year, which is why it has landed at the number two spot. If Airtel is moving at a speed of 100, then VSNL is at 36, so it really needs to shift gears and step on the gas if it wants to move up. It was the second lowest brand on the persuasion as well as brand pull index. VSNL enjoys only 50% brand loyalty, and it if it's not careful, then another 20% of its existing users are likely to shift to competition. The last two on the Users' Choice future readiness index are BSNL and Reliance Infocomm. Both need to pick up considerable speed in they wnat to gain a significant future consumer share. Let's see what happens next year, with four brands combating Airtel for the top spot.