What Is a Prepaid Service Plan?

Telcel is a telecommunications company in Mexico that is one of the subsidiaries of América Móvil, Mexico's leading operator.

TELCEL

The company was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Mexico City. In Latin America, Telcel's main service is wireless communication services. Among those countries, it is one of the largest suppliers in the telecommunications industry. Telcel is a leading provider of wireless communications services in Mexico. As of December 31, 2006, Telcel's cellular network covered more than 63% of the geographic area, including all major cities, and accounted for 90% of Mexico's total population. ^[1]

Telcel offers AMPS, GSM, TDMA, and newer technologies UMTS and WCDMA. As for older technologies that are widely used and relatively basic, such as TDMA and AMPS, they are still in use.

Telcel has a variety of different rate plans to meet the needs of different market segments, satisfy customers and provide voice services to them. Telcel sees the Mexican prepaid market as a large and growing market. Therefore, a variety of prepaid plans have been developed. One plan is postpaid. One month before the customer's monthly settlement, the customer pays in advance the amount of usage that will be used within a specified period. In addition, Telcel offers other prepaid plans, including no activation or monthly fees. Prepaid customers who purchase a prepaid card for a specific amount of talk time can also get additional services such as voicemail and caller ID. As part of the prepaid service offering, Telcel offers a new customer and friend kit that includes call charges, cell phones, chargers and other accessories.

Prepaid customers are often reluctant to buy a prepaid plan with a fixed financial commitment or no credit history. Prepaid plan services require different consumer groups, such as youth markets, family customers, providing certain income, etc. Otherwise, services will not be available, and customers are more willing to pay in cash due to their credit status. Prepaid customers also include parents who want to control costs for their children.

In 2004, Telcel started to provide network services on the GSM network. Although the main network provider was in Mexico, in other countries, NII Holdings (Nextel Corporation).

In January 2002, for post-paid and pre-paid users, TELCEL launched a two-way short message service. By using GSM technology, it can send short messages to other countries. Since March 2003, since December 2004, postpaid and prepaid users can send and receive short messages to other users in up to 35 countries.

In April 2002, it became the first Telcel operator in Mexico to provide high-quality information services. The development of utlilization installation and upgrade services through its SMS function has relations with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) in the United States.

Telcel provides data services, GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSPA, HSPA +, 3.5G and 4G LTE

According to Xinhua News: Mexico City February 25, 2011 ^[2]

The Mexican TELCEL mobile phone company announced recently that the company will use a new generation of mobile communication networks in May 2011 and will use the first generation of mobile communication chips independently developed and produced by Mexico in mobile phones.

The 2.5-generation GSM platform network to be put into operation in Mexico was jointly developed by TELCEL and Ericsson, which laid the foundation for Mexico's wireless communication to enter the third generation (3G).

TELCEL has invested US $ 900 million to develop this new mobile communication technology, of which a detachable chip card will be installed in a new generation of mobile phone products to meet the needs of different types of mobile phones. This 2 cm wide, 3 cm long and 3 mm thick chip card stores various user information such as addresses, personal data, and any GSM phone can recover these data. This allows users to replace different models of mobile phones at will, but personal data and information in the mobile phones do not need to be re-entered.

TELCEL estimates that between 2002 and 2006, the number of Mexican users using this mobile communication service will reach about 16 million.