By
Stuart Cochran
Driven by prosperous economies, growing levels of competition for telecoms services and a drive to target underserved sectors of the population, the resilient mobile industry is still growing despite the many challenges it faces. According to industry analyst, BuddeCom, overall global mobile revenues are predicted to reach over $1 trillion around 2012.
Adding to the positive picture, a report published by Strategy Analytics indicated that the service revenues of mobile operators had increased by four per cent in the first quarter of 2010, while EBITDA increased by 5%. In addition, annual growth in mobile services revenues increased to five percent in the first quarter of 2010, up by 2.8% in the last quarter of 2009. Latin America, Middle East and Africa also experienced positive growth, up by 1% and 1.2% respect¬¬ively from the last quarter of 2009.
Operators across the world are fighting to achieve a competitive edge over their rivals in order to develop and maintain market share. At the same time, users of mobile services and applications are becoming ever more sophisticated and demanding.
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Overall global mobile revenues are predicted to reach over $1 trillion around 2012. |
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The reason is sometimes cultural. The digit eight has special significance in China, for example, while seven is seen as lucky in many parts of the West. In other cases, users look for numbers which either have special significance to them or that are easy to remember – numbers that contain a sequence of digits that relate to birthdays, for example, or consecutive numbers for family members.
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This combination has led to a new focus on the ‘user experience’ as a key battleground for operators in their ongoing struggle to achieve business advantage. In particular, there is a growing emphasis on broadening customer choice and, by so doing, improving the customer experience.
In this context, giving subscribers the opportunity to choose their own personalized phone number can be key to both building loyalty and expanding the user base.
Why Number Choice Matters
For decades now, individuals have been prepared to pay thousands of pounds or dollars for the privilege of having their own personalized car number plate. In recent years, mobile phone numbers have become monetized in a similar way. In many parts of the world today, the ability to choose a personalized number exerts a powerful attraction for prepaid users.
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In many markets, the level of interest is such that operators can expect significantly increased revenues simply by offering this service. From the operator’s perspective, there are two key elements to this: firstly, the revenues generated from the ability to charge for number itself, secondly, the fact that a customer who has chosen their own number is likely both to be higher spending overall and to stay longer with the operator. This is a particularly key issue in the Middle East, where subscribers, many with high disposable incomes, look for the cachet of owning their number of choice.
Issues to Address
So, there is clearly a market demand for broader number choice. Unfortunately, for a variety of structural and logistical reasons, it has been difficult for operators to provide this service effectively using today’s pre-provisioning model for SIM card distribution.
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