Quack

This might seem a strange topic - doesn’t everyone love the pre-paid business because it eliminates things like fraud and bad debt? This was the question on my mind as I listened to a presentation from Telstra on this very topic at a recent Billing and Revenue Assurance conference. (more…)

There are more and more mobile phone and VOIP offerings appearing that feature a set number of “minutes” per month, and sometimes different categories of minutes. This style of pricing has always been common in the USA. I wanted to discuss a couple of issues that this raises. (more…)

I’ve been slack. Very slack. After several months of sustained production, it’s fair to say I hit a patch of “writers’ block” when it came to material for the blog. There was enough going through my head, but the discipline of putting finger to keyboard seemed to fade. Then I read a fantastic quote from the great Jodi Picoult. (more…)

Deakin University have released some research (also here) about mobile phone spending habits among youth. They are concerned about the “economic impact” of mobile phones. (more…)

Some interesting things are happening in the world that might be a step backward. In the US, ISPs are starting to lock customers in to 24 month contracts. In other developments, Orange in the UK have extended their contract periods on new handsets to 24 months. (more…)

I often get asked by our Partners: “what is the churn rate these days?” Having a great view of a diverse set of service providers, one would think that I could give an answer to this question on one leg. (more…)

Those pricing people at Telstra continue to impress me with their cleverness when it comes to innovative and customer-friendly pricing changes … pause … NOT! (I just see Borat Movie; I like).

You just need to know a few small facts about voicemail calling patterns (more…)

I like nothing more than mining through the millions of CDRs that we collect and process on behalf of our Partners (actually, I do like more than that, but some things are beyond the scope of this blog). It’s like playing a jigsaw puzzle - sorting through lots of small pieces of information to discover a bigger picture.

There are a few fairly simple trends that I have observed. Call rates continue to trend down, but this is more than made up for by (more…)

Nobody likes to see their mobile phone bill increase month after month to the point where it becomes a major expense – especially in times of rising interest rates. And unfortunately one of the most common reactions to a big bill is to try and blame someone else.

Lately the finger has been pointed at the mobile phone dealers who gain recurring commissions on bills going to their customers. (See Mobile phone industry should come clean and Mobile users locked in and losing out). This keeps coming up (more…)