Telecommunications company LIME is seeing an increase in the number of customers shifting from prepaid to postpaid services as the demand for increased data continues to trend upward.
Head of products at LIME (Barbados), Sharon Jemmott, told Barbados TODAY there was “a significant demand” for data, making it even more critical for the company to build out its fibre network.
“You are having demand for data on the fixed-line side of the network as well as the mobile side of the network,” she said.
“So we are seeing an increase in the purchase of the smartphones, and on the fixed-line side, demands for more
speed as it relates to broadband. That is pretty much where the industry is heading. So you will see data prices [and] data
packages are changing and evolving as customers’ needs change,” she added.
Jemmott said the company had launched the LIME’s MyPlan offer in response to the growing demand for data, which allows customers to have a customized package based on their data,
voice and text message needs.
“Customers are loving our new MyPlan so we are seeing a migration from prepaid to postpaid but there are still customers will always be prepaid customers. They want to be able to manage how they spend and manage the children’s spend so there will be that market, but we are seeing a slight shift to postpaid . . . . That plan is what is forcing a lot of migration from prepaid into the postpaid market. But prepaid is still larger than postpaid,” explained Jemmott.
Though admitting that LIME was keeping a close eye on its competitors, Jemmott said what was more important was listening to what customers were asking for and delivering.
In addition, Jemmott told Barbados TODAY that the company had carried out research and would be opening at least three new outlets “in strategic locations around the island” within the coming months.
She made the comments recently on the sidelines of a cocktail reception in which the management team of the company was introduced to players in the business community.
“We have already started testing some locations. So we have tested three additional locations and that data we have collected suggest that we need to have stores in those locations. So over the next couple of months you will see more LIME stores being rolled out,” she said.
Jemmott declined to give details but said the new stores would be sub-contracted.
“We are doing full stores in some locations and in some [locations] we are doing what we call kiosks . . . . We are responding to our customers and going where they want us to go,” she added.