Telco app monetisation: why it usually does not sell, and what unlocks it

Frequency as the root metric

Any commercial discussion eventually reduces to one number: how many times per month a customer opens the operator’s app. From market observation, the average is 2-4 times a month. That is lower than a banking app (8-15), much lower than a messenger or social network (30-100+), and lower than an active e-commerce app user (5-10).

At that frequency, the operator’s app cannot work as a self-sufficient sales channel. The window for showing an offer is narrow. The customer opens the app for a specific job (top-up, check balance, look at the bill), gets it done and closes. Any attempt to insert a sale into that moment feels like an obstruction.

This reality cannot be brushed aside with marketing. The choice is to accept the frequency and work within its limits, or to change the frequency by adding new functionality with its own usage rhythm. The second is harder and more expensive but possible.

Four reasons frequency stays low

Reason one — task design. The telecom app was historically built for service tasks: check balance, pay, look at the tariff. These are infrequent operations. Payment — once a month. Balance check — a few times a month. Tariff change — once or twice a year. These tasks do not produce more than 2-4 opens per month.

Reason two — no push reasons to come back. Push notifications in most telco apps are “you have X gigabytes left” or “pay your bill”. These are utility messages, not engaging ones. The user opens the app on their own initiative, not because of a reason.

Reason three — the UX is shaped for service. The home screen shows balance, tariff, last payment. That is good service UX and poor commercial UX. The customer does not find on the first screen a reason to do something new or try a new product.

Reason four — lack of relevance. When the operator shows the same banner to all customers (“new tariff for everyone”), the customer learns to ignore the promo block. Within a few months they no longer see the banner even when something relevant is there.

If all four are not addressed, any investment in app monetisation produces a marginal result.

What it takes for the app to start selling

First — broaden the target use. The app should solve more jobs than service. Several candidates. Bill payments hub: utilities, taxes, insurance, kids’ classes. A category with 2-4 monthly uses per user that anchors them to the app independent of telecom needs. Loyalty: accumulating points from partner purchases that can be spent in the app. Family connectivity manager: family account management, parental controls. Each of these adds frequency without aggressive marketing.

Second — push relevance. A notification has to respond to a specific event of a specific user at a moment when it has value. Not “we have a new tariff”, but “you spent 250,000 UZS on roaming in Turkey this month, we have a cheaper package”. Not “pay your bill”, but “your bill is 30% lower than usual, we can look into it”. This requires event-driven architecture (see the around-core layer article).

Third — a home screen that shows the next best action, not a static service block. One block, relevant to the user’s current context. Not three banners, not four carousels — one block that is worth tapping. UI discipline that often loses to the desire to “give the customer more choice”.

Fourth — measurement and iteration. Each offer has to be measured: impression → click → conversion → revenue. Without that, it is impossible to know what works. Most telco apps show offers without per-offer economics measurement. As a result nobody knows which offers earn and which lose.

What does not work

A full app redesign. Most redesign projects in telecom are repackaging the existing service UX in modern visuals. Frequency does not change. Conversion does not change. Only perception of “old vs new app” changes, and that fades within 2-3 months.

Buying an off-the-shelf offer engine without an operating model. A platform without rules, events and an owner is a tool without management. The same platform with an operating model becomes a strong product. The difference is not the platform; it is the operating model.

High-volume push campaigns. Increasing push volume raises the unsubscribe rate, not conversion. Per-push conversion drops as volume grows. Optimal push frequency in telecom is 2-4 per month per user under the condition of relevance. Beyond that, opt-out grows.

The race for “features like a bank’s”. Copying banking app functionality does not work because banking has a different baseline: the customer is there out of necessity (payments), the bank has the right to push about finances, and unit economics builds on balances, not impressions. Telecom cannot become a banking app and should not try.

A concrete example: bill payments hub

This is the most productive functionality often done badly by telco apps. Worth examining separately.

What should work in a bill payments hub. Utility payment (electricity, gas, water) with memory of providers and previous bills. Tax payment through Soliq integration. Internet and cable TV payment if from other providers. Payments for kids’ classes, private schools, after-school. Insurance payments. All of these are categories with regular frequency.

What is usually done badly. Payment takes 7-12 taps instead of 2-3. No memory of providers and bills — every payment treated as the first. No auto-pay. No notifications about a new bill from a connected provider. Utility payment UX worse than Click or Payme — meaning the operator offers functionality that competitors deliver better.

What changes when done correctly. Frequency rises from 2-4 to 6-10 per month for an active user. That is approaching banking-app frequency. The app becomes a utility for financial tasks, not just for telecom. After that, push relevance becomes possible because there is context: what the user pays, recurring expenses, categories of interest.

The bill payments hub pays back through provider fees (low take rate), partnerships, and indirectly — increased retention through increased switching cost. If the customer attaches utilities to the telco app, leaving for another operator becomes harder not because of the number, but because of habit.

When telco app monetisation is not a priority

If the app’s main current value is service for customers (balance, paying their own bill) and the team does this poorly — service to industry standard first, then monetisation.

If frequency is below 2 per month and the team does not understand why — diagnostic on frequency first, investments later. Otherwise all usability and monetisation investment lands on a non-working base.

If the operator has a strong dealer network and customers prefer offline purchases — the telco app is not the main sales channel and monetisation investments will not return what improving the dealer experience would.

If push and personal data regulations are unsettled — push campaigns in “launch first, sort later” mode create regulatory risk above the upside.

If the company is not ready for 12-18 months of investment in a bill payments hub before frequency rises meaningfully — better to leave the app as is and develop other channels.

What to put on the 2026 roadmap

First quarter. Audit frequency and conversion of the current app. Without numbers any proposal is contestable. Concretely: measure opens per active user per month by segment, conversion on existing offers, top reasons for opening and closing without action.

Second quarter. Pilot one new category — bill payments hub for one type of payment (say utilities) or family account for one segment. The pilot’s goal is to measure frequency lift and retention impact.

Third quarter. Build out the chosen category. Add 2-3 related scenarios. Event-based push. Per-offer measurement.

Fourth quarter. Decide to scale or close. If frequency did not lift by more than 50%, the hypothesis did not work. If it did — scale to next categories.

This roadmap is not about a beautiful app. It is about increasing frequency as the foundation for monetisation. Without frequency nothing works. With frequency almost everything is possible.

How SamaraliSoft can help

Telecom App Monetisation Audit — diagnostic of frequency and conversion of the current app by segment. Analysis of the four causes of low frequency specific to the operator. Selection of 1-2 features for a pilot that can lift frequency. Design of a measurement framework so the pilot decides on numbers rather than perception. And a four-quarter roadmap with measurable checkpoints.

Related reading

• /en/insights/telecom-subscriber-intelligence-operating-model/ — operating model around data
• /en/architecture/telecom-around-core-architecture/ — growth layer around BSS/OSS
• /en/insights/telecom-growth-after-connectivity/ — where the money sits after connectivity
• /en/use-cases/telecom-churn-war-room-mnp/ — retention in the MNP era

Sources

• Digital Government Portal — state of digital infrastructure UZ
• UzTelecom — example telco app in UZ
• Central Bank of Uzbekistan — payment systems statistics
• UzDaily — telecom market 24,873 billion UZS