Top mobile firms quick to grasp opportunity
Companies taking advantage of the telecoms market liberalisation will not be restricted to fixed-line operators or resellers.
Mobile phone companies also are keen to grab their slice of international revenues.
PCS provider Sunday was one of the first off the mark, gaining a licence to carry out international simple resale in the first tranche announced last month.
Established GSM and PCS player SmarTone has been offering callback-based international calls for some time.
Although the business does not represent a big slice of its revenues, it has been growing, with the company recording 'a few million' minutes of traffic each month.
SmarTone executive director Bengt Nordstrom said the company had been approached by several potential foreign partners who could receive and refile traffic.
'The deals on offer are better than callback,' he said.
He believed mobile operators could be clear winners from the market deregulation.
International calls could be originated and terminated on a mobile when on many occasions a fixed-line phone might not be available, giving cellular companies an added advantage.
He suggested that, unlike fixed operators, mobile service providers were willing to accept lower margins on this business.
'For people like us this is incremental revenue and although lower margin it still contributes to the bottom line,' he said.
Also, international services were a 'strategic fit' with the other value-added functions available on a mobile phone, he said.
