IDT Asia, which attracts customers to its telecommunications business by selling prepaid calling cards, is finding room to grow in Hong Kong's retail international direct dial calling market despite stiff competition from incumbent fixed and wireless network operators.
'Consumers have continued to respond to our innovative programmes and we're experiencing traffic growth year after year,' said managing director Chip Barton.
IDT Asia said the brisk movement of overseas contract workers and mainland tourists in Hong Kong helped fuel growth of its prepaid IDD calling card business.
'In Hong Kong today, we're taking market share away from the competition through more than 500 points of distribution for our prepaid calling cards,' said Mr Barton (below). The programmes target specific segments including the Filipino, Indonesian, Indian and mainland Chinese communities.
Outbound IDD traffic from Hong Kong is growing at an average of about 13 per cent annually, according to Office of the Telecommunications Authority data. The volume of outgoing telephone calls was 6.097 billion minutes for the 12 months to the end of June last year, compared with incoming traffic of 2.161 billion minutes.
IDD prepaid calling card minutes contribute about 10 per cent of total outbound traffic in Hong Kong, says a spokeswoman for Hutchison Global Crossing, a fixed-line unit of Hutchison Telecommunications International.
'This market is still growing, with increased demand from the mainland traveller segment,' the spokeswoman said. All fixed-telecommunications network services providers in Hong Kong are competing in the prepaid card business.