The history lesson in prepaid
The original inventor and provider of prepaid mobile phone services was Andrew Wise, founder of Banana Cellular, a.k.a Banana Communications. In April 1993 Banana Cellular began provisoning prepaid wireless and prepaid mobile phone services from their small office located at 637 N. 3rd Ave, Phoenix, Arizona. Customers were able to connect to any other mobile phone on the prepaid network. Banana Cellular filed a Patent Number 5826185 on November 16th, 1994. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_as_you_go_%28phone%29In 1996 Massimo Sarmi, General Manager of Italian mobile-phone operator TIM, was part of the team that invented the recharge prepaid SIM card that allows customers to buy wireless calls in advance. Prepaid SIMs opened up the mobile market to millions of new users with limited budgets or spotty credit histories, immigrants, children, tourists, and so on. The concept was largely responsible for TIM's (TI) early success and was copied all over the world. More information...
