Acision propels Ufone to revolutionise SMS services in Pakistan

Acision’s mobile data services and charging solutions powers Ufone to establish itself as a leading operator in Pakistan

When Ufone wanted to expand its market share and differentiate from competitors by offering and managing innovative SMS services, the operator naturally turned to partner with Acision, a long-term leading provider of mobile data solutions.

Established in 2001, Ufone is one of the leading mobile network operators in Pakistan, serving over 18 million subscribers in a market with 60 percent mobile penetration rate1. Ufone is a subsidiary of Pakistan Telecommunications Company Ltd (PTCL), with Etisalat owning 26% of the company. Operating in one of the fastest growing mobile markets in Asia Pacific, Ufone adds an average of 93,0002 new subscribers every month, attracted by its diverse prepaid and post-paid price plans, the lowest call and SMS rates and the most flexible SMS bundles offered in the market.

In addition to SMS bundles, Ufone also introduced innovative SMS services beyond that of person-to-person messaging, such as texting from its fixed line network to mobile, SMS chat from desktop PC to mobile, SMS chat to TV programmes, international SMS connections and MMS bundles, thereby fuelling further exponential growth in mobile messaging traffic.

A Price Competitive Market
Being a highly price sensitive market, it is common for a mobile subscriber in Pakistan to carry multiple SIM cards from different operators so that they have the option of utilising the latest best priced offers and gaining the best mobile coverage in the market at any given time. There is little subscriber loyalty to a single operator, resulting in high user churn rates, and operators across Pakistan grappling to resolve these issues.

To counter the problem of churn, Ufone adopted the strategy of offering affordable and high quality cellular services that can be accessed anywhere across the country. One key tactic used is to offer innovative, feature rich, market competitive deals on the most frequently used mobile service: SMS.

Ufone’s strategy was to offer an unbeatable combination of generous SMS bundles at the best price while delivering superior service experience and cellular network coverage. Given the highly competitive nature of the market, Ufone also desired the flexible capability to quickly match or outdo SMS offers provided by other operators. This meant that Ufone needed the ability to alter or introduce new offerings at a moment’s notice and also have sufficient messaging capacity as and when required for new SMS bundle promotions.

To enable this kind of network flexibility, Ufone selected Acision’s mobile data services and charging solutions, thereby expanding its messaging capacity with the Acision SMSC, as well as implementing the Acision Charging Engine to provide rating and charging for prepaid and post-paid subscribers, and Acision Self Subscription Gateway to provide subscribers with the ability to manage their own bundles.

The solution to manage and charge for high SMS volumes – in real-time
Ufone deployed the Acision Charging Engine to provide rating and charging for its prepaid and post-paid subscribers. The Acision Charging Engine proved an ideal solution for Ufone, enabling the introduction of innovative bundles and fast time to market for new services offers, while reducing its costs by a minimised hardware footprint compared to traditional IN systems.

The Acision Self Subscription Gateway (SSG) enables users to easily subscribe or opt-out of bundle services through SMS. Branded as Self Care, Acision SSG provides Ufone’s subscribers the convenience of managing their own bundles, be it subscribing or unsubscribing from bundles, check their remaining allowance and monitor the expiry of their bundle – all from their handset. This Self Care feature proved a key differentiator for Ufone, as no other operator is offering this level of service experience in the market.

Since enabling the subscriber self-care functionality in December 2009, up to 90% of Ufone SMS subscribers use the Self Care feature.

Ufone also experienced an increase in customer satisfaction, reduced churn rates and lower operating costs at the operator’s call centre.

In anticipation of the surge in SMS volume due to the large uptake of bundle offers and person-to-application SMS, Ufone augmented its messaging capacity with the Acision SMSC to future-proof their messaging infrastructure and provide the highest quality of service and performance to their customers. 

Partnering with Acision has enabled Ufone to enjoy substantial revenue increases of up to 16% as Acision’s Self Subscription Gateway and SMSC have enabled Ufone to address its business challenges, rapidly launch highly flexible and personalised charging models, whilst keeping OPEX and CAPEX costs to a minimum.

With innovative and feature rich offers, Ufone not only was able to launch attractive bundles to the market quickly, but also cater to market demand with a painless, low threshold way of subscribing via the subscriber self-care. This resulted in Ufone successfully attracting new subscribers, improving SMS user retention, experiencing a 10% reduction in churn due to better customer experience, and gaining a 10% increase in revenue.

Acision’s solutions provided Ufone with the capability to provide innovative and feature rich offerings to users and enhanced their ability to quickly launch attractive bundles and promotions.

Future growth with Acision
Ufone can credit the implementation of its data services and charging infrastructure with enabling them to offer the most flexible and high value plans in the market. Prepaid users can choose various prepaid plans inclusive of a minimum of 300 to 8,000 SMS bundles and with a validity period ranging from 8 hours to 30 days. For post-paid users, they can decide on price plans offering a minimum of 50 to 10,000 SMS bundles per month. Users can also opt-in for an unlimited SMS plan at varying prepaid and postpaid rates, based on an average rate of US$0.95 per day.

Ufone‘s success in the Pakistan market as the cellular operator with the best value has been astounding. Since the launch of its various high volume SMS bundle and the subscriber self care functionality, this has lead to an increase in subscription acquisition of over 7%. Its SMS bundle offers are in high demand with consumers and SMS bundles account for 85 percent of prepaid SMS traffic for the operator3.

Ufone Pakistan has relied on Acision messaging systems since 2001. The partnership continues as Acision empower Ufone to offer innovative new mobile services, that are scalable, future-proof and low total cost of ownership, assuring Ufone a profitable and sustainable business outcome.

1. Pakistan Telecom Authority, 2010
2. Pakistan Telecom Authority, 2010
3. Acision engineering department