About three-quarters of service providers plan to expand their prepaid offerings to include services that are traditionally offered only to post-paid customers, according to research conducted by Ovum for Admocs.
However, existing BSS/OSS systems cannot support the shift in strategies and significant changes in are required. Of those polled, 47% said their prepaid strategy would require moderate to large changes to their BSS/OSS systems to address technical challenges. Inability of their back-office systems to support fast time to market of new offerings was the technical challenge cited most frequently by respondents.
In addition, service providers are already making changes to BSS/OSS systems, with two-thirds of respondents implementing changes to accommodate new prepaid service capabilities while the rest are planning to do so within the next two years. About 61% have deployed convergent charging systems or are planning to do so.
"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," said Ovum analyst Sara Kaufman.
Ovum forecasts that prepaid will grow from 75% of total connections worldwide in 2010 to 77% by 2015.
"Service providers understand that the prepaid wireless strategies they adopt today will have a major impact on future profitability," Kaufman said.
The research found that 47% of respondents already offer high-demand consumer devices, such as smartphones and other mobile broadband devices, to prepaid customers.