AMSTERDAM, Netherlands and BANGKOK, Thailand -- Gemalto (PARIS:GTO), the world leader in digital security, today announces the successful completion of an unprecedented campaign for Advanced Info Service Plc. (AIS), Thailand’s largest mobile operator, to update Over-The-Air (OTA) the information contained in the SIM cards of nearly 8 million AIS subscribers. By updating the cards over the air, there was no need for the operator to mail out replacement cards or ask customers to come into an AIS point of sale. The entire campaign, which otherwise would have taken many months, was completed in less than 40 days. This record deployment time translated into major benefits for AIS, including customer satisfaction, ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) maintenance and cost savings.

The OTA campaign was rolled out on the back of a decision from the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) in Thailand to shift from a 9-digit, to a 10-digit dialing system so as to meet the telecommunications needs of the country for the next 30 years. A deadline of three months was set for all mobile operators to address the replacement or updating of the SIM cards for their subscriber base, without which subscribers would have become unable to use the very popular SMS (Short Message Service).

Continuing the strong revenue and profit generating SMS service after the cut-off date from the NTC meant that AIS needed to change the SMS Centre address in all its subscribers SIM cards. Updating the SIM cards over-the-air and without consumer intervention meant big savings for AIS in cost, time and resources it would ordinarily have needed to spend in updating or replacing cards physically at AIS point of sales. It also guaranteed maintenance of their ARPU as subscribers were able to continue to use the SMS service after the cut-off date without interruption. Being seamless in operation, subscribers did not notice the change taking place and were spared any frustration.

“After careful consideration of deployment costs, potential impact on ARPU from our SMS service, and customer satisfaction, we selected Gemalto’s OTA solution which we felt could help us reach out to a significant proportion of our customer base within a very short time frame,” said Mr. Pornsak Hanvoravongchai, AIS SIM technology manager.

“Operators are reluctant to ask customers to come into the shop just to update their SIM card,” added Dr Martin McCourt, President, South Asia, Gemalto. “In addition to the annoyance factor, there is the risk that subscribers might choose to churn to another operator at that point. Using Gemalto’s advanced LinqUs over-the-air service we were able to update all AIS’ cards without customers even noticing. As displayed by AIS, SIM cards are a valuable active asset for operators especially when coupled together with a central OTA administration platform. AIS has shown that this combination is the perfect way to massively update populations of SIM cards at record speeds of up to 1.5 million subscribers per day, irrespective of the mobile phone used.

Gemalto