Next Generation Prepaid
Most of today’s mobile telephone customers around the world use various types of prepaid solutions when purchasing their mobile telephony. There is simply no doubt that it was prepaid telephony that resulted in the explosion of mobile telephony penetration.
From a historical point of view it was Andrew Wise, founder of Banana Cellular, who filed patent number 5826185 on 16 November 1994. This patent was for a solution allowing customers to connect to any other mobile phone on the prepaid network.
In 1996/97, TIM in Italy was the first operator to launch the prepaid solution that is so widespread today, allowing customers to purchase and pay for a certain amount of traffic that is credited an account related to a mobile number and a SIM card and which can then use the money or amount of traffic available in the account.
When we look at the global mobile market, there is no doubt that the marketing and sales of prepaid mobile telephony is a global success that all mobile operators around the world now offer their customers. Billions of euro and trillions of minutes and SMS are being consumed on the prepaid platforms being used by operators, MVNEs, MVNOs and Service Providers.
How can Strand Consult help you optimise your prepaid business case?
We have spent the necessary time to analyse and understand this market and have had a close dialogue with many operators around the world to collect knowledge, analyses and experiences from the global prepaid market.
One of our teams has spent two man years examining the prepaid market and has developed a number of concepts that can help turn the negative trends that many operators are experiencing today. We know that knowledge is the road to success and the operator with the most knowledge and a structured approach to their prepaid strategy, will find it far easier to be successful on this market. Our analyses show that many operators are currently using a great deal of their prepaid market resources on short-term solutions, solutions that are for example focused on matching competitor’s prices. But this behaviour is very similar to a spiral of death, that will slowly but surely result in an operator’s prepaid business case developing negatively.
We therefore recommend our customers to purchase a customised Strand Consult workshop, where we together examine the prepaid market, how it has developed and how it will develop in the future. We can deliver a combination of knowledge, inspiration and a number of creative suggestions for concepts that our customers can immediately implement.
