Trying to stand out today in Africas mobile roaming market requires mobile operators to make a huge effort in a growing and competitive mobile environment.
African operators have begun to realize that “pioneers” in the prepaid roaming arena who quickly unveil a complete prepaid service offering will enjoy a major advantage over those who are slow to fully accommodate this massive segment of potential customers. Early responders in the prepaid sphere will quickly expand their customer base and gain the competitive edge.
According to recently released industry figures, the percentage of prepaid subscribers in Africa currently stands at a massive 95 percent. However, prepaid customers are still not free to use their mobile phones universally wherever they travel, as they require authorization before they make a call based on their credit. As a result, they often 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. These methods result in lost revenue for both the home and visited mobile network operators, as well as frustration when subscribers are unreachable.
Operators in Africa wishing to differentiate themselves from the competition should focus their attention on deploying solutions that will give their prepaid subscribers the freedom to roam. Deploying CAMEL services will not only increase existing customer loyalty and attract new customers, but will also generate revenues from this large untapped market.
The Freedom to Roam
CAMEL is a set of standards that allows real-time billing and is based on Intelligent Network standards. The many advantages of CAMEL is that it can open a wealth of new opportunities that allow the mobile operator to tap into new revenue streams and increase ARPU.
For the operator, CAMEL services would be an instant win-win situation as it extends the ability to offer IN (Intelligent Network) services in any network. For the subscriber - seamless global roaming.
While in their home environment, prepaid subscribers have access to intelligent services, such as short codes, address book dialing, call correction, and VPN (Virtual Private Network). These services are currently unavailable when roaming. Enabling CAMEL for outbound prepaids will provide customers with these same personalized services and allow them to use their mobile phones abroad, as they do when they are at home, for a true Virtual Home Environment (VHE) .
CAMEL enables prepaid roaming in any network by providing the home operators with all the necessary information and tools to control and charge their outbound prepaid roamers. The home mobile operator not only receives all the information needed to activate the call, but can also be confident that prepaid customers will be charged efficiently for calls, preventing customers with zero balance from being connected.
Let CAMEL do the Work
Traditionally, operators have focused their attention on marketing roaming capabilities to their postpaid customers, as this segment of the market generated greater ARPU and more roaming income.
Prepaid subscribers are now questioning why they are not provided the same services offered to postpaid subscribers, who are very much the minority in Africa.
It may be that operators having long thought that because prepaid subscribers were unable to roam, they were regarded as the customer group that generated little or no new operator revenue. However, times change and the lifestyles and buying patterns of prepaid subscribers have evolved, which has made roaming capabilities a prerequisite for all mobile subscribers.
In Europe, for example, CAMEL prepaid roaming was launched several years ago, mainly because of the high market share of prepaid customers. Operators identified several advantages to be had from the prepaid roaming market. Among them were new revenue streams from offering prepaid roaming services, another was gaining customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Today's advancement of prepaid technology means that operators do not have to invest substantial sums of money to optimize prepaid subscribers’ usage. New prepaid solutions that operate seamlessly alongside existing CAMEL and USSD Call-Back enable operators to maximize the value of their prepaid roaming subscribers.
The advantage of CAMEL is clear. It enables prepaid roaming in any network and provides the home operator with all the necessary information and tools to control and charge their outbound prepaid roamers. In addition, CAMEL also plays a key role in being able to control fraud and identify theft.
Shlomo Wolfman, COO and co-Founder, Starhome
