The country’s three mobile phone service providers and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) are in talks aimed at enabling prepaid users to register via SMS and the Internet.

DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd chief marketing officer Chee Pok Jin said the four parites were combing through the details of offering the option to prepaid users.

Speaking to reporters at the launch of two new services for its prepaid customers in Kuala Lumpur on April 12, Chee said it was DiGi’s intention to provide its customers the option of registering via SMS or online in the near future.

Currently, its prepaid customers can only register at DiGi Centres and DiGi’s authorised dealers. Since Jan 1, 2006, all mobile prepaid users are required by the MCMC to register by year-end.

As of December 2005, there were 16.62 million prepaid users representing 85.2% of all mobile users, with 4.4 million users subscribing to DiGi.

Chee also said DiGi had invested RM2 million to offer two new services, “Talktime Extend” and “Talktime Advance,” on its command-based *128# info access for its prepaid customers in a bid to retain and attract more prepaid customers.

With Talktime Extend, prepaid users with low usage patterns will be allowed to exchange credit for a longer airtime validity period.

“Instead of building a stockpile of idle credit, customers will be able to maximise their spending; why reload when you can’t even exhaust your credit?” Chee said.

Chee said Talktime Extend would be available on a promotional basis for two months and is applicable to users with at least RM95 of credit, who would have to exchange RM35 of credit for 30 days' validity.

He said Talktime Advance was designed for users with high usage and constantly running out of airtime credit.

With this service, customers with a credit balance of between RM2 and 10 sen can request for an advance of RM3 in credit and two-day validity, which will later be deducted when they perform a reload.

It is available to those who have been using DiGi's prepaid service for at least six months.- theedgedaily