Vodafone targets international workers with MVNO

Vodafone UK notched up its second MVNO contract in as many weeks on Wednesday, announcing the launch of Lebara Mobile, which is targeting the UK’s 1.5 million strong migrant worker community.

The SIM-only prepay service will be provided to customers under the Lebara brand and will be made available through outlets targeted specifically at the migrant community.

Customers will be supported by own language customer service before and after the purchase.

Tim Stone, director of new business development and wholesale at Vodafone UK, said: “In March we set out the Vodafone UK strategy to drive revenue growth and, as part of this, our ambitions to grow our wholesale market share.”

Stone reckons that the migrant market in the UK could be worth up to £500m. Lebara already has operations in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and Norway.

But until Lebara unveils its pricing structure later on Wednesday, it remains to be seen how the offer competes with Vodafone’s own migrant targeted tariffs. From September, Vodafone UK Pay As You Talk customers were able to make calls to friends and families in 16 countries for just 5p per minute.

Prepay customers are able to make the 5p per minute calls from the UK to landlines in China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Lithuania, Latvia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Thailand and Turkey. Calls made to mobiles in these same countries cost 15p per minute.

At the time, Vodafone said there were an estimated 5 to 7 million people from international communities living in the UK.

Lebara will go up against Carphone Warehouse’s Mobile World MVNO on the T-Mobile network, which offers calls to a wide range of countries, including India for 12p per minute and South Africa for 8p. Last week, Voda and Carphone launched a low cost, no frills MVNO in the UK under the Talkmobile brand.