Keeping it Real(time) Real-time charging, service delivery and all things real-time

I’d like to try and lay out the problem that is likely faced by a  service provider looking to launch new prepaid services. Marketing wants to roll out new prepaid communications services, especially considering the recent estimate that by 2015, 77% of subscribers will be prepaid. But all too often, the network people say it’s not possible.

Why is that? The problem is that existing network infrastructure gets in the way – the networks that most service providers are operating can’t combine the prepaid application with other applications. Technically speaking, prepaid is an Intelligent Network (IN) application, and the IN model only allows one application to work at a time. This means service providers cannot offer additional applications or services to a prepaid customer. They can only offer a simple prepaid voice service, which means that they are leaving money on the table.

Network equipment providers (who are the main IN and prepaid application vendors) can provide workarounds. But these are expensive and lock service providers in to that specific vendor. So, even if a service provider does decide to invest in the workaround, they won’t be able to bring applications from other vendors to their prepaid customers. That’s a big concern for the network people, especially since most service providers have a variety of different applications (especially IN applications) from different vendors in their networks.

Of course customers don’t care about network limitations; it’s not their problem. They want new and different prepaid services and if their service providers can’t offer them, they’ll eventually find another provider that can. Few service providers can afford that kind of loss in today’s ultra-competitive market, especially considering the growing dominance of prepaid. To prevent churn, many service providers are turning to service broker solutions.

In my next blog i’ll provide some more information about Service Broker solutions and how they help Service Providers handle their prepaid problem.