New MVNO targets Africans working in UK
A new MVNO has launched in the UK, targeted exclusively at the African migrant community, claiming to be the first player to launch prepaid mobile credit transfer over SMS between the UK and Africa. The service effectively allows African callers to reverse charge calls to the UK.
Vizz Africa will provide a dedicated mobile SIM card to allow the African community living, working and travelling to the UK, to communicate with their friends and relatives in Africa at discounted rates.
The company claims to have agreements with all of the African operators, and the service allows users to transfer pre-paid mobile credits to loved ones back in Africa safely.
“We wanted to launch MVNOs targeted towards specific communities,” Pat Nabhan, CEO of parent company QiComm, told Telecoms.com. “The first one was with Dialog Vizz for the Sri Lankan community. We wanted to see how successful that could be and we’re now at 10,000 activations per month,” he added.
He added that the firm has plans to launch international mobile money transfer services in addition to airtime credit transfer, but that a number of banking regulatory hurdles remain to be negotiated.
“There are plans, but we’re taking things one step at a time,” he said.
This could prove to be a potentially good service if it fulfils to the letter, the goals that Mr. Pat Nabhan and his team have set forth. However, money transfer may not be as easy for his team as transferring prepaid mobile credits. While we wish him luck, we wait to evaluate.
Note: West African ICT Congresss opens in Lagos, October 18-20.
We will also be exploring regional MVNO opportunities at http://www.mvnoindustrysummit.com/africa in September 2012. The new (Polish, Chinese and African) UK MVNOs should there is still much sub-segmentation of the market to be done it seems…