Basingstoke, 10th October 2006 (MOREL)- Juniper Research has forecast that the annual growth rate for expenditure on new convergent mobile prepaid/postpaid solutions will average 30% per annum to 2011. Expenditure is forecast to grow from $299m in 2006 to just over $1.1bn by 2011 as operators strive for competitive advantage and improved operational efficiency. The largest expenditure over the 2006 to 2011 period is forecast to be in Europe due to the complex legacy charging environments installed in most established operators.

This equates to over 350 deployments of convergent mobile prepaid/postpaid charging solutions around the world in the period 2006 to 2011, with the fastest growth in the period up to 2009. There will also be good opportunities for solution suppliers in the developing markets, particularly at the smaller deployment end of the market.

Convergent prepaid and postpaid charging has tremendous potential benefits for mobile operators and for mobile subscribers:

Consumer Benefits

-- Offers enhanced spending control and instant access to account information.
-- Enables more flexible pricing tariffs regardless of whether the customer is a prepaid, or postpaid account holder.

Operator Benefits

-- Provides the opportunity for improvements in operational efficiency through charging platform rationalisation.
-- Provides the opportunity for greatly increased flexibility in product creation and pricing.

Convergent mobile charging systems are now a rapidly growing segment of the telecom BSS/OSS market, following a rather subdued period.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for solution vendors and systems integrators to boost their sales in the telecom BSS/OSS space, provided they have the right products and skills," commented Bruce Gibson, Research Director at Juniper Research. He went on to say: "Convergent prepaid/postpaid charging for mobile services has been discussed for a number of years, but there have been few operational deployments. We believe that this is about to change. There have been a small number of high profile deployments for larger operators and a larger number of small deployments for smaller operators, or for sections of an operator´s customer base. The technology works and the benefits are there for all to see. As operators approach critical points in their OSS/BSS replacement cycles the pace of operational deployment will increase dramatically."

White papers and further details of the study ´Mobile Convergent Charging Solutions: Opportunities & Markets, 2006-2011´ can be freely downloaded from www.juniperresearch.com. Alternatively please contact Michele Ince at michele.ince@juniperresearch.com, Telephone +44(0)1256 830002.

Juniper Research provides analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing analyst reports, consultancy and industry surveys.