Starhome allow mobile operators to deliver international roaming to prepaid customers
Starhome, the provider of roaming services and converged solutions for Mobile Network Operators, has launched its Prepaid Anywhere solution. Prepaid Anywhere allows mobile operators to offer its prepaid customers user-friendly international roaming on any worldwide network, without the hassle of USSD callback or costly CAMEL upgrades.
Currently, prepaid customers are not free to use their mobile phones universally wherever they travel. This restriction on roaming freedom is mainly due to complications in real-time charging. As a result, prepaid customers have to resort to other ways to make and receive calls, such as buying local prepaid SIM cards in the visited countries, or using calling cards resulting in lost revenue for both the home and visited network operators.
Prepaid Anywhere fills the gap, allowing prepaid customers to seamlessly make calls and use VAS (value added services) as they roam internationally, providing the same end-user experience as postpaid roamers receive.
Orly Nesher, vice president of marketing at Starhome added, “In the prepaid market, the fragile level of customer loyalty is dependent more on the VAS offered than cost. Operators who can provide their prepaid customers with easy access to international roaming will significantly increase revenue from the prepaid market segment. It also adds considerable value to their service offerings, and will help them to differentiate themselves from their competitors.”
Starhome’s Prepaid Anywhere solution replaces the need for either CAMEL or USSD Callback. Due to its high cost CAMEL (Customised Applications for Mobile Network Enhanced Logic) is only operational on approximately 30 per cent of operator networks. USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) callback solutions, on the other hand, deter customer usage due to their complex nature.
Prepaid Anywhere is based on Starhome’s IntelliGate Roaming Service Delivery Platform. It delivers a completely seamless service, using a SIM applet to forward call details to the home network. The home mobile operator not only gets all the information needed to activate the call, but can be confident that prepaid customers will be charged for calls, preventing customers whose accounts are overdrawn from being connected.
Mobile operators using Prepaid Anywhere can significantly increase their prepaid roaming revenue. Starhome’s solution not only expands and differentiates their service offerings from their competitors without needing to form CAMEL agreements, but also strengthens existing customer relationships and encourage additional usage of mobile operators’ services.
Starhome’s Prepaid Anywhere service has been short-listed as a nominee by the 2007 GSMA Awards judging panel for the Best Roaming Product or Service category.
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