Go is confident it can fend off the competition in the run-up to Christmas and afterwards, as the mobile market becomes more crowded.

With two Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) in the offing - Bay Mobile and Redtouch - and Melita's mobile business set for launch in the next few months, Go chief executive officer David Kay believes customer experience and service will set Go apart.

Spurred by research carried out recently by international market research firm GfK over a four-month period, Go set about putting the wrongs right.

"Researchers looked at customer interfaces and customer touch points and came up with recommendations on customer experience and service. Hence the current Go campaign," Mr Kay explains. "Go has invested heavily in services, and process times are now shorter. We went through a bad patch a year ago with our call centre. Now, we are way ahead of our competitor.

"Go was also rated the best telecoms company for value for money and overall customer care, and found to be reliable and innovative in terms of providing what the customer wanted. Products like our 'Broadband Everywhere' package combining fixed and mobile Internet is an example, and we intend to build on Go's packages. We will push forward on new products and new exclusive services towards Christmas. The new quad-play outlets are also in response to what the market wants."

Referring to Melita, Mr Kay says a new mobile competitor is "a serious threat to mobile business."

"We will react accordingly," he says. "We have anticipated this for some time and have been planning for it. We have optional strategies depending on which way they go. They will be a formidable competitor, no question about it.

"It is a very crowded marketplace and the logical conclusion is that not everybody will survive. Certainly on the mobile network, you need substantial customers because there are lots of upfront fixed costs. The MVNOs can survive a bit longer, maybe, because they have marginal costs, although they have to market and manage their operation. They make tiny margins. Yes, people will switch to the MVNOs, but it is not the major threat."

Asked about the recent adjustment in roaming rates in line with the EU's new regulations, Mr Kay says rates were not low enough in countries like France and Germany, but not in Malta. "Roaming is a good earner for companies and makes up for subsidies on handsets, for example. Roaming still is a very profitable part of our business. We are making less on it now - the reduction was 66 per cent - but we did see some elasticity and people will use voice and data services more. The perception will change and people will realise that roaming is cheap."

Mr Kay says Go's second submarine cable project is on track. It will enable the company to offer enhanced reliability on all services, which is welcome news after a major fault disrupted service for several hours last August.

"Our first cable is connected to Telecom Italia. The second will be connected to Interoute and other providers. There will be multiple connection points on the Sicilian side where we have good connectivity to Germany and other countries," Mr Kay explains.

"If one route goes down, the service switches to another. Some of the outages are not caused by our cable but by somebody else in the world. Several operators experience many outages a week. But they have resilience given that cable faults are a fact of life. It was not the section of our cable that went down in summer. It was the half that belonged to Telecom Italia on the Sicilian mainland.

"We have recognised this problem and have invested quite substantially in the second cable. Customers will begin to experience enhanced service within the first quarter of next year. Our customers will have redundancy. It is our competitive advantage."

The new cable also supports Go's wholesale ambitions and its growing data centre arm for which more investment is earmarked. On the wireless data front, Go is particularly pleased with its nationwide 3.5G service and its fallback on EDGE (2.75G). Prices for data have more than halved since the initial offering, Mr Kay points out, so more customers are accessing data on the move.

It has been over a year since Maltacom's house of brands regrouped under the Go umbrella and Mr Kay says customer expectations soared as a result. He points out that that helps him focus the organisation to deliver more quickly on all services and with added value.

Fixed line subscriber numbers did fall in the first six months of this financial year but not as hard as expected, purely, Mr Kay says, because customers were loyal. The company's TV arm is doing "extraordinarily well", having just announced its 30,000th subscriber and more content, including sports, is in the pipeline.

"The Go brand has helped significantly," Mr Kay insists. "Many people believe we are better than the competition and we are more reliable. We are the higher level brand. Research proves that."

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