An OSS/BSS startup will shutter its own MVNO in favor of providing service creation, policy, and billing management for Sprint's prepaid wireless services.

Sarah Thomas, Director, Women in Comms

July 8, 2014

2 Min Read
Sprint Personalizes Prepaid With ItsOn

Sprint is planning to personalize its prepaid mobile data, voice, and messaging service offers, and it's taking one of its MVNOs in house to do so.

The carrier announced Tuesday that it plans to integrate OSS/BSS technology from ItsOn Inc. into its prepaid platform to build more personalized, flexible services and pricing plans. As such, the consumer-facing MVNO that ItsOn launched on Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S)'s network in 2013, Zact Mobile, will cease operations. (See Sprint Revamps Prepaid Offers.)

ItsOn said Zact customers can choose to keep their device and migrate to Sprint or discontinue service. It began offering its service free as of July 4. The startup says its goal was to use the MVNO to showcase its technology and attract the interest of wireless operators looking to white-label the service. Sprint is just the first. (See The Re-Resurgence of the Prepaid Wars.)

The announcement builds on the relationship between ItsOn and Sprint first announced last month, at which time ItsOn CEO Greg Raleigh told Bloomberg that Sprint would actually use the cloud service for its contracted customer base. (See Sprint Chooses ItsOn for OSS/BSS.)

On the prepaid front, Sprint didn't outline what kind of services it would launch using ItsOn, but looking at Zact's offerings provides a pretty good idea. Zact was a 2013 Leading Lights finalist for Best New Mobile Product for a service that lets Android users tweak and customize their plans any which way to suit their needs. Zact offered 36,000 plan options its customers could switch to at any time via a mobile app, promising no overages, along with credits for any used data. (See 2013 Leading Lights Finalists: Best New Product (Mobile).)

It's an innovative offering, whether on prepaid or postpaid, where customers are used to selecting buckets of megabytes and hoping they bought enough data without having too much excess. (See Carriers Warm Up to Service Innovation and Policy Revenues Climbing, but Hazards Loom.)

ItsOn says its software-as-a-service contract with Sprint will enable rapid service creation, sponsored data plans, and automated OSS/BSS and network functions, including policy orchestration, charging, rating, billing, and on-device customer care.

CNet has uncovered Sprint trials of lower-cost family data-sharing plans. ItsOn didn't say whether it was powering the new services, but this is the type of change that Sprint would be able to execute easily with a more flexible OSS/BSS. (See Sprint Launches No-Sharing 'Framily' Plans and AT&T Reduces Its Family Plan Pricing.)

Sprint's prepaid group says it will repurpose the Zact Mobile cloud-based virtual network platform beginning this summer.

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Sarah Thomas

Director, Women in Comms

Sarah Thomas's love affair with communications began in 2003 when she bought her first cellphone, a pink RAZR, which she duly "bedazzled" with the help of superglue and her dad.

She joined the editorial staff at Light Reading in 2010 and has been covering mobile technologies ever since. Sarah got her start covering telecom in 2007 at Telephony, later Connected Planet, may it rest in peace. Her non-telecom work experience includes a brief foray into public relations at Fleishman-Hillard (her cussin' upset the clients) and a hodge-podge of internships, including spells at Ingram's (Kansas City's business magazine), American Spa magazine (where she was Chief Hot-Tub Correspondent), and the tweens' quiz bible, QuizFest, in NYC.

As Editorial Operations Director, a role she took on in January 2015, Sarah is responsible for the day-to-day management of the non-news content elements on Light Reading.

Sarah received her Bachelor's in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She lives in Chicago with her 3DTV, her iPad and a drawer full of smartphone cords.

Away from the world of telecom journalism, Sarah likes to dabble in monster truck racing, becoming part of Team Bigfoot in 2009.

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