A while back I met with Jote Bassi, Marketing Director of Anam, he was telling me about their Smart Services Platform. Which, incidentally, is what Telus, one of Canada’s biggest mobile operators, has just implemented.
Telus had an issue with their prepaid base — some customers were able to send text messages when their prepay balance wasn’t in credit. Anam’s platform has fixed this, but not only that, Telus is now primed with a highly capable system that will enable a ton of additional services should they wish to implement.
For example, if Telus choose to do so, they can more or less ‘switch on’ Anam’s SMS money transfer service that I covered a while ago.
I think Telus — and the other North American mobile operators — would do well to look to value added services such as Anam’s SMS money transfer service. There’s no stopping the relentless march toward the bit-pipe generation. Mobile voice and data access is a utility and, particularly with the recent ‘unlimited’ service plans hitting the marketplace, it’s very much becoming a commodity. There’s not much you can do about this happening. You can panic, you can jump around firing off press releases and doing deals that add no value to the customer and that nobody uses. Or you can face reality, deal with the commoditisation, accept it and look to offer additional services around the commodity.
It’s going to be interesting to watch the marketplace over the next few years. I think Anam will play an increasingly important role in helping operators get past the ‘pain’ and into the ‘gain’.