Bill Melody: Over the last five years the world has seen the explosion of prepaid cell phones. Neither policy makers nor researchers understood the prepaid model. The development was an unexpected one promoted by poor people. I’d be interested in the panels interpretation.
Emmanuel Lallana: In the Philippines that’s the case. They didn’t have any inkling that there would be this explosion. One of the interesting things happening in the mobile sector is really the market saying let us be.
Rajat KathuriaIn India’s context that’s a correct assessment. Today the numbers are 470 million subscribers, 95% prepaid. What the policy maker did not anticipate was the demand for spectrum. Because the market wasn’t used to allocate spectrum, that’s caused enormous problems.
Per HelmersenOne thing the research community is accused of is that we were unable to predict the success of text messaging. I think this is also something used against us in the prepaid context. My reply to this is perhaps we should shift focus to monitoring than predict. The consumer has more creativity than any researcher could have. I’m trying to shift my community to simply monitor what’s going on.
There may be other interesting trends. We’re monitoring the use of missed calls for example. Sometimes filling as much as 70% of network capacity. I’m sure there are numerous other examples of this.
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