New alliances struck and old ones reaffirmed; as the clock ticks towards the month-end liberalisation of the international call market, phone providers are in the midst of striking deals allowing them to offer new cheaper routings and improved services.
This week New T&T signed a deal with the Global One international consortium for a range of destinations and on the same day New World Telephone signed a deal with Global One allowing it to offer world-wide high-speed data and multi-media services.
Global One managing director of greater China Jacques Grezaud, at both events, said this underlined the new nature of the industry.
Partnerships should be no longer viewed as exclusive but could apply wherever a business advantage made them work, he said.
The liberalisation on January 1 allows providers to rent bulk capacity from Hongkong Telecom and resell this to customers, a process known as international simple resale (ISR).
For companies such as New T&T there are two ways to do this and renting capacity directly from Hongkong Telecom is not always the best option.
