Intelligence Pays

The success of pre-paid as mass market technique not only made TIM of Italy the largest European cellular operator but also benefitted some of the largest Indian operators. The high capacity and security needs make the network-based IN the appropriate solution for pre-paid. Besides, it can be used to provide a wide variety of other advanced value-added services quickly as well as customized to market needs, so essential to differentiate from competition.

The recent launch of IN services by DoT/MTNL will put additional demands on the cellular operators from their subscribers to offer similar services. The emerging convergence between basic and cellular networks would require seamless portability of services across such networks. IN also offers a route towards this convergence. In this sense, IN may emerge as the focal point of the network, rather than just a service overlay used to deliver premium value-added services.

IN’s success lies in the fact that it enables operators to differentiate against competition not only by tariffs but by services which are almost endless and can be created by the operator himself without depending on the network supplier. The IN platform has already been successfully deployed by operators in Europe, America, and Asia enabling them to offer a range of services, over and above the basic voice service, like pre-paid, advanced freephone, universal personal number, and mobile access hunting. In the Indian GSM market, pre-paid is emerging as the most important of these services.

The Indian GSM operators have three major issues: to ensure early access to service revenues; to handle billing in a country where everyone may not have bank account; and to reduce or eliminate fraud. The panacea seems to be the pre-paid system. With a pre-paid system, a subscriber deposits an amount with the operator or service provider and is then given an equivalent amount of airtime credit. When the credit is exhausted, the subscriber’s service is suspended until a further deposit (refill) is made.

Pre-paid has a number of advantages: the operators receive their money before the subscriber uses the service; the operators gain access to new market segments (travellers, youth, budget conscious, etc.) which may not otherwise be interested in mobile communications; there is no necessity to generate bills so administrative costs are reduced; and for prepaid subscribers, the potential for fraud is eliminated.

Although there are many ways to implement pre-paid using a separate platform, the most efficient and secure implementation is through the use of IN. Operators gain not only the intelligence to offer pre-paid but additional network capacity and the capability to offer various other services and more flexible tariff packages. Also when the subscriber’s credit time is reached, the IN based pre-paid system instantaneously terminates the call; while with some other pre-paid systems, the call in progress is allowed to terminate naturally, offering the potential for considerable loss to the operator.

IN based pre-paid associates, with subscriber’s SIM card, an account in the central database. This account can be refilled using convenient and cost-effective pre-paid paper coupons sold by operators through dealers. IN based pre-paid service, thus, brings to the operator many benefits in terms of capacity (a large number of subscribers can be given service), security (the credit is checked in real time during call progress and the call is instantaneously disconnected once the credit limit is reached), fraud control (identification of service, check on user information, check on credit, and indication of success, or failure of the service request), speed and flexibility (fast introduction and easy customization), and revenue maximization (reduction of bad debt and operational costs as there is no billing and cash flow improvements).