Introduction

The Mobile Telecommunications industry has always been an exciting, volatile and dynamic space. With 5G looming in the horizon, OTT players such as Whats app,  and Viber replacing messaging and voice, regulatory restrictions and price regulation have all had an adverse impact on top line of the Telcos. Today telcos not only compete with local market substitutes but directly compete with strong multinational OTT players.

The impact of OTT completion has been strongly felt in the Asian markets where customers are price sensitive and have a low ARPU and low switching costs. Additionally with the smartphone costs coming steeply down, most Asian market’s smartphone penetration is expected to overthrow the feature phone dominance in a few of years.

Still the quintessential question remains on how Telcos can increase their revenue, offer an unique value proposition compared to the completion(domestic and OTT) while increasing customer satisfaction. The answer is to deeply understand customer needs and address them in an easily adaptable technology.

What is a Virtual Number Solution?

In short, the Virtual Number(VN) Solution allows any subscriber to spin off an additional number(s) using their existing number(2 MSISDNs through 1 IMSI). It transforms any phone (smart or feature) to act as a dual SIM phone seamlessly in a matter of seconds. A user can spin off a number for temporary use as well as their permanent secondary number need.

Today the Virtual Number is implemented in a number of operations throughout Asia and  different operators have chosen it to utilize the dynamic solution in different ways.

How it works?

The service is offered to the customers as a monthly Value Added Service(VAS). Customers can easily subscribe to the service through a simple USSD activation.

Once the Virtual Number is obtained the customer can easily start calling or texting using the virtual number by adding a simple prefix to the front.

When a third party tries to reach you through the Virtual Number you can easily distinguish it by the prefix on the caller CLI.

Benefits

There are number of benefits that can be derived from offering the Virtual Number solution to an operator’s customer base. First, it generated multiple revenue streams for the operator through voice, sms, data and subscription. The service can easily penetrate 5% of the subscription base and will also increase the ARPU of the user.

Secondly, the service will reduce churn for the operator and prevent customers from moving to a different operator for their secondary or temporary number need. A customer can instantly activate as well as deactivate numbers in a matter of seconds.

Additionally, this service can be used as a major differentiator between the domestic completion as well as the OTT players. It will be addressing an existing need in the marketplace while offering an innovative cutting edge solution.