The move is a first for a Chinese operator

China Telecom’s European arm is to launch consumer facing services for the first time outside of China after striking an MVNO deal with UK carrier Everything Everywhere.

The deal was secured through Everything Everywhere’s mobile virtual network aggregator (MVNA), Transatel, and takes the company’s portfolio of MVNO partnerships to 24 in the UK.

The MVNO will launch in the first quarter of this year and will specifically target Chinese residents and businesses in the UK, as well as Chinese students and tourists.

Yan Ou, managing director of China Telecom Europe, said: “Entering the UK mobile market is a strategic move for China Telecom. We are keen to launch the service in the UK as soon as possible as there is a real gap in the market for the  provision of tailored mobile services and competitive tariffs aimed at the growing Chinese population in the UK.”

South Africa's MTN has now begun its LTE pilot program

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.

Ou Yan, managing director, China Telecom Europe

The European arm of Chinese carrier China Telecom will name the host of its forthcoming UK MVNO play before September, managing director Ou Yan told Telecoms.com. China Telecom Europe, which focuses predominantly on international backbone and enterprise and carrier services, will be launching a UK MVNO before the end of Q112, targeting the half a million Chinese living in Britain with a SIM-only, Chinese content offering, Ou said.

The firm has received bids from host networks in the UK, Ou said, and will be making its selection in less than a fortnight. Key criteria include coverage, 3G network performance and price, Ou said.

“We are the world’s largest Chinese content provider and we know how to deliver this kind of content,” he said. “I have been living in the UK for six years now, and it’s not very easy for the Chinese community here to get Chinese language content, so this could be our entry into the consumer market.”

If successful, Ou plans to replicate the MVNO in other European markets, including France, Germany and Italy, where there are substantial Chinese communities. France has the largest Chinese population in the region, Ou said, with more than 600,000 resident Chinese. The firm also plans to target Chinese tourists visiting the region. But China Telecom Europe is not looking for a single host operator across Europe, Ou said, arguing that this might limit the firm’s expansion.

The Dutch MVNO market remains dynamic

Almost one third of mobile subscribers in the Netherlands are customers of virtual operators, according to a report published this week by Dutch analyst house Telecom Paper. The total number of MVNO subs in the market has now hit 6.6 million, or 32.8 per cent of the total subscriber base, the analyst said.

More than half of the virtual brand customers—56.4 per cent—are on MVNOs owned by the market’s mobile operators, which are gaining share. Telecom Paper said that 13.7 per cent of the total Dutch mobile market are customers of independent MVNOs, down 1.3 per cent on Q3 2010.

At the end of the first quarter of 2011 there were 56 MVNOs operating in the Netherlands, although 11 of these control the majority of the market. This number has remained the same since Q3 last year, although there remains movement in the market, with several players exiting and others taking their place since that point.

“Hi and Telfort are the leaders of the operator-owned brands and Lebara and Lycamobile of the independent MVNO brands,” the analyst firm said in a statement. “In terms of network operator usage, KPN continues to lead, although it has lost some share. Both Vodafone and T-Mobile increased market share, with T-Mobile growing the most due to its acquisition of Simpel and growth at Ben.”

Telecom Paper said that new entrants will need to innovate on service proposition and by finding niche markets, such as immigrant populations. “New players will have to differentiate themselves by offering real value-added services, and not just plain voice and SMS services, in order to survive,’’ said Alejandra van de Roer, senior analyst at Telecompaper and co-author of the report.

Everything Everywhere now has 21 MVNOs under its belt

UK network venture Everything Everywhere, a collaboration between T-Mobile and Orange, said Thursday it has won three new mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) – Priyo, The Phone Co-op and RMmobile.

The deals were secured by MVNA Transatel, taking Everything Everywhere’s total of MVNO customers to 21.

All three new MVNOs will launch within the next month, with Priyomobile targeting Bangladeshis living in the UK; The Phone Co-Op offering mobile, line rental, calls, and broadband integrated into a single bill; and RMmobile targeting business customers.

Everything Everywhere’s existing MVNO partners include Virgin, H3G, Telecom Plus, GET, Ikea, Vectone, Nowtel, Matrix, Econet, Lyca, Ethnic Challenge, Cable and Wireless, i-Pass, Opal, Intercity, C Mobile, Axis Telecom, and Unicom.

Turkcell has announced its launch in the German market

Europe’s third-largest operator in subscriber terms, Turkcell, has announced its intention to expand into the European market, starting with Germany in April this year.  As part of the newly formed subsidiary Turkcell Europe, the German MVNO will involve the launch of 1200 retail locations and will initially target Turkish citizens living and travelling in Germany with pre-and-postpaid offerings.

With over 33 million subscribers, Turkcell has a 54 per cent market share in Turkey; it also operates in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Moldova, Cyprus, Ukraine and Belarus. CEO Sureyva Ciliv said that the initial target market will be Turkish citizens living in Germany who wish to keep in touch with relatives and are “keen on receiving Turkish content and information.” According to Turkcell, further expansion into the European market will be based on the Turkish ex-pat population of any given country. In an effort to attract users, the operator has abolished roaming rates for ex-pats living in Germany and is hoping to gain a four per cent share in the market there.

Turkcell, which is 37 per cent controlled by Sweden’s TeliaSonera, had originally planned to launch in Germany at the beginning of this year, following an announcement of a five-year 3G network-sharing deal with Deutsche Telekom in October 2010. Last week, TeliaSonera said that it was preparing to take legal action against Turkcell board of directors chairman Colin Williams over claims that the company was blocking the increase in number of independent board members. TeliaSonera claimed that it had been denied the right to raise the issue at the company’s AGM.

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There is an opportunity in Saudi Arabia for the kind of market segmentation that can be achieved with MVNOs, we said – and the country’s expatriates represent a prime target for such services.

So it was with interest – and perhaps, dare we say, even a little smugness – that we read today that Zain Saudi Arabia, the country’s No. 3 mobile operator, has launched a low-cost international calls plan in partnership with Connect Saudi Arabia, a company that is part-owned by regional MVNO operator Friendi Group. (Dubai-based Friendi has already set up MVNOs in Oman and Jordan and has ambitions to establish others across the MENA region and beyond.)

Zain’s new plan, called Friendi Mobile Package, offers low rates for calls and text messages to destinations including the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, the US, Canada, the UK, Bahrain and the UAE. There will also be international mobile content and credit transfer services.

Now, a statement from Zain about the partnership says that Connect is assisting with the operation and distribution of the Friendi package on an outsourced basis, but it does not describe Connect, Friendi or the new offering as an MVNO.

But Saudi Arabia’s other two mobile operators, STC and Mobily, are likely to take a dimmer view of proceedings and are expected to contest the legality of Zain’s new offering on the basis that it constitutes a form of MVNO, for which there is no mandate within the country’s existing telecoms regulations.

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Cognatel’s fully hosted platfrom will reduce the time it takes MVNOs to get to market and claims to dramatically lower the cost of market entry for new MVNOs by eliminating the need for expensive upfront investment in new technology and allowing MVNOs the freedom to focus on shaping and marketing their offer.