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Sprint, with self-service provider Telespree, introduced Mobile Broadband on Demand on March 18, a prepaid way to offer mobile broadband services to Sprint Wholesale partners – who can then pass the service, branded however they’d like it, to their customers.
Mobile Broadband on Demand is offered as a standalone product or packaged with back-office services, and it features over-the-air activation, making it simple for enterprises such rental car companies, airport kiosks and hotels to offer mobile connectivity to their customers and charge by a time frame – a day, week, month -or megabytes.
The end-user customer can purchase a branded data card, choose the data plan he or she would like and essentially connect.
“It’s an offering that doesn’t require the distribution partner to take calls from customers,” Bill deKay, Telespress chief executive officer, told eWEEK. “Once it’s plugged in I can get on, identify myself and monitor my usage [via a data meter icon].”
When allotted time or megabytes are running low, customers can “top off” their balance, said deKay.
“We’re very excited about this opportunity to build on the momentum we’re seeing in mobile data services. The growth curve continues to be very steep,” Ben Vos, vice president of service management for Sprint Wholesale Solutions, told eWEEK, saying the solution enables Sprint to reach a segment of users who have a short-term connectivity needs.
“We’ve got a lot of MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) customers focused on pre-paid, and those segments are a natural opportunity for us to extend a mobile broadband service that they can extend to their users,” Vos said.
On March 3, Sprint’s prepaid wireless brand, Virgin Mobile, refreshed its Broadband2Go plans, which package Sprint 3G wireless Internet services into manageable packages, ranging from $10 for 100MB to $60 for 5GB.
On Feb. 10, Sprint held a quarterly financials call in which it revealed that it had slowed the loss of subscribers that it experienced in earlier quarters – an improvement largely attributed to its focus on pre-paid customers, including those from Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile.
Sprint’s Mobile Broadband on Demand solution is available as of today and will be demonstrated at the CTIA Wireless 2010 show, March 23 through 25 in Las Vegas.