A shift in service provider strategies for prepaid wireless: Ovum-Amdocs

Ovum in association with Amdocs revealed a research report on fundamental shift in service provider strategies for prepaid wireless. The report suggests to remain competitive, service providers must launch new prepaid and hybrid services and to establish a charging environment that can provide this required agility and flexibility. As per the report, 73 per cent of service providers plan to expand their prepaid offerings to include services that are traditionally offered only to postpaid customers. CSP will moderate large changes to their business and operational support systems in order to answer the technical challenges involved in expanding prepaid services.

The report also puts forth that CSPs would offer hybrid payment models. 63 percent of respondents, primarily North American and European service providers, said they were already offering hybrid (a mixture of prepaid and postpaid) payment models to customers. Providing more service and payment choices and increasing customer loyalty are driving service providers' move towards hybrid service offerings. Responding to customer desire to control their spend and improving provider ability to assure their revenues (by moving pay-as-you-go prepaid customers to monthly plans, for example) are additional strong motivators for adopting hybrid service models. As many as 67 per cent of respondent said that they are in the process of implementing changes to accommodate new prepaid service capabilities with an additional 33 per cent planning to implement changes within the next twelve to twenty-four months. 38 per cent of service providers interviewed have deployed a convergent charging system or are in negotiations for one. An additional 23 percent said they were planning to deploy a convergent charging system within the next five years.