The global prepaid market is growing faster than post-paid, but winning and retaining these customers is no longer about extending plain-vanilla telephony services to people on fixed budgets. The advance of smartphones and faster 4G networks forces mobile operators to get smarter about how they offer data services (that were traditionally offered to post-paid subscribers) to everyone.
A recent poll conducted by research firm Ovum (and commissioned by Amdocs) reveals the vast majority of service providers and operators can read the writing on the wall.
A whopping 73 percent of respondents said they plan to expand their prepaid offerings to include services that are traditionally offered only to postpaid customers.
In addition, nearly half of the service providers polled said they needed to make moderate to large changes to their business and operational support systems in order to answer the technical challenges involved in expanding prepaid services.
The research is based on qualitative interviews of senior executives from 19 service providers in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, collectively serving hundreds of millions of subscribers. Interviews were conducted between August and November 2010.
As Ovum sees it: “Greater availability of high-end devices such as smartphones, along with services like messaging, mobile broadband and applications, are increasing customer expectations from prepaid wireless services.” Ovum forecasts prepaid will grow from 75 percent of total connections worldwide in 2010 to 77 percent by 2015.
MetroPCS boosts usage with personalization
But it’s not just about a need for payment choice, convergent charging and innovative offers that effectively move pay-as-you-go prepaid customers to monthly plans. This shift also turns up the pressure on operators to think of new ways to maximize revenues from value-added services (VAS) and encourage prepaid users to explore (and purchase) content and apps on offer.
MetroPCS is using personalization to drive prepaid customers to use more services (thus creating the conditions that will allow the operator to increase stickiness and spend).
Specifically, MetroPCS is rolling out a new portal that leverages artificial intelligence to dynamically adapt the content displayed to users on their mobile devices to their individual tastes.
For more on how MetroPCS’ is using personalization to get more mileage out of its prepaid customer base, check out my post over at the Amdocs Interactive blog.
Read the rest of the post here.
Matt Anderson is Head of product marketing for Amdocs Interactive, a distinct business within Amdocs focused on Value Added Services, which is the world’s leading provider of digital commerce, Mobile Internet and personalization solutions. Matt has over 13 years experience bringing products to market in the telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Amdocs in 2008, he directed marketing for Nuance’s mobile business unit, focused on market development of speech activation applications in the mobile, navigation and automotive industries. Previously he launched the next generation of T9 at AOL Wireless and was responsible for managing mobile VAS offers at AT&T. Matt also founded a start-up in the telematics business and managed marketing and sales for one of the first wireless data networking companies. Matt has an MBA from the University of Washington. You can follow Matt on Twitter (@matt6156).
Disclaimer: Amdocs Interactive is an MSG client and supporter.