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Denise Tsang

PHONERENT Hong Kong has launched rental phone services on the mainland aimed at undercutting established mobile-phone companies.

   The rental services include mobile phones and associated SIM-cards.

   At present, mobile phone companies such as Hongkong Telecom CSL, Pacific Link and SmarTone only provide services to their own mobile-phone users.

   Charges on these services vary from province to province, but a user could, for example, be charged as much as $6,000 a year for the use of a mobile phone in Beijing.

   PhoneRent rents out phones and SIM-cards on a daily, monthly and yearly basis.

   'Customer can opt either for renting a mobile phone or a SIM-card, or both, and choose how long they use the services,' PhoneRent general manager Llse Kerling said.

   'Our target customers are those businessmen or travellers who sometimes visit different provinces annually, and the service charges of the local companies are too expensive for them.

   'Our charges are 15 per cent lower than those offered by the mainland hotels.'  PhoneRent allows customers to return their phones to the firm's branch offices in Beijing and Guangzhou.

   'We are now considering a Shanghai office,' she said.

   Dismissing fears that other mobile-phone companies would follow suit, Ms Kerling said their services had already generated profits.

   'Because we have made profits, PhoneRent will still survive, even if a price-cutting war is sparked,' she said.

  'We rented out about 20 mobile phones daily this month.'    A spokesman at Hongkong Telecom CSL said: 'We are unlikely to change our services in the near future, because we have to have our mainland partner's consent.'    The company has been co-operating with the China Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to provide services across the border.

   'We aimed at another group of users, travelling frequently in China for business purposes,' the spokesman said.

   SmarTone, offering monthly mobile phones services only in Beijing and Shanghai, said it did not rule out the possibility of offering daily services.



PhoneRent's strategy is undercutting