The mobile technology progresses at tremendous space and users find it difficult to keep up with the jargons that surface in the industry. Industry insiders like to use jargons for different terms to explain technology, industry standards and services with an assumption that normal users understand them. Let’s take a look at some of the jargons used in telecom industry.
Postpaid:
It is one of the common jargons used to define a type of services. The jargon is used for a customer who opts/signs for a long term service contract with the telecom service provider. Telecom service providers seek to enroll more postpaid subscribers on its customers list as they are expected to stay with telecom carriers for longer time. These types of subscribers also spend more every month. Besides, postpaid subscribers are considered to be more financially secure and companies also conduct credit checks of these customers while accepting them as postpaid subscribers.
Telecom companies are known to offer subsidies over services and telecom products to entice customers. For example, an iPhone with a postpaid connection is offered by telecom carriers at $199 while a normal iPhone without contract may cost $649.99 in the market.
Prepaid:
It is a commonly used jargon to define telecom service that does not involve any contractual agreement between user and telecom carrier. In this type of service, user pays in advance for the voice minutes. The user has complete freedom on usage of the minutes and he may not have to purchase voice minutes for weeks or months, if he/she doe not frequently use the mobile phone for communication. Prepaid user is required to pay a set rate for specific minutes and there is no monthly phone bill in such setup.
ARPU:
The term means average revenue per user. The term is mostly used in context to understand how much a person is paying for phone bill every month. The average revenue per user has different components in it. Generally a mobile phone user spends on voice minutes, text messages and data transfer. Carriers also consider users extra spending such as wallpapers and ringtones in this category. The ARPU statistics show that the user spending has remained same despite the voice rates going down. One reason for the average revenue per user remaining same is, customers are heavily spending on text messages and data transfer instead of voice minutes.
Connected device:
The term is used to define any device other than mobile phone that has a cellular connection. Amazon’s Kindle is one such device which uses the AT&T or Sprint Nextel’s network to access digital books over air. AT&T offers cellular connections on different devices such as dog collars, medicine bottles and digital photo frames. These devices have the lowest ARPU ($2 -$3 a month) but are still profitable for telecom carrier.
Today you will find majority of mobile phone users understanding these jargons easily. As the mobile technology advances, users will come across new jargons in near future.
