Prepaid mobile phone

To maintain revenues, some operators have devised reward schemes designed to encourage frequent top-ups.

To free up resources on the network for new customers, an operator will periodically delete prepaid SIM cards which have not been used for some time, at which point, their service (and its associated phone number) is discontinued.

Before this date, all mobile phone services were offered on a post-paid basis, which excluded people with poor credit.

Prepaid mobile service was invented by Subscriber Computing, Inc., an Orange County company, (1986–1998), founded and directed by Arlene Harris.

In 1996 MTN became the first mobile operator to introduce a prepaid cellular service in Africa, popularizing "pay as you go" in emerging markets.

[5] The first Prepaid card was called "Mimo" and was launched by TMN, the mobile phone operator of Portugal Telecom, in September 1995.

[6] In 2006 Swisscom celebrated ten years with its product and service "NATEL® easy" which also holds a patent on "Prepaid mobile subscriber identification card and method implemented thereby".

They often have fewer contractual obligations – no early termination fee, freedom to change providers, plans, able to be used by those unable to take out a contract (i.e. under age of majority).

In some cases they are limited in what they can do with their phone – calls to international or premium-rate telephone numbers may be blocked, and they may not be able to roam.

These limitations are usually[citation needed] the results of deficiencies in the prepaid systems used by the wireless carriers, as technology has evolved to the point where these are easily managed by triggers or APIs to third-party solution providers.

[10] The reason is a concern by police and security agencies that anonymous use of prepaid mobile services facilitates criminal or terrorist activities.

Prepaid phone users can be anonymous for two reasons: While there is no doubt that criminals and terrorists use prepaid SIM cards to help stay anonymous and avoid easy detection, to date there has been no empirical evidence to indicate that: In fact, a publicly available policy assessment report from Mexico showed that mandatory SIM registration introduced there in 2009 had failed to help the prevention, investigation and/or prosecution of associated crimes.

[11] A Los Angeles technology company developed a mobile application of the same name that replicates this functionality for a smartphone.

United States Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced legislation requiring consumers to produce identification before buying pre-paid phones in 2010,[12][13][14] which was not passed.