When you roam about the world?

An independent Mobile Virtual Network Operator promises to slash your ‘roaming call’ bills substantially. How does Telewise International Limited keep its promise?
By Ross Milburn

Suppose you’re planning a business trip or holiday in several countries. You need your mobile phone, but ‘roaming’ (calls to and from overseas locations) costs an arm and a leg. Where do you get the best deal? You might think that your won mobile network could negotiate with foreign telephone carriers, cut the cost to the bone and give you the benefit, right?

rong. Mobile phone operators regard roaming as a high-profit opportunity with sky-high charges. You may get a much better deal from an independent MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) which doesn’t own a network at all, but negotiates with global carriers to buy bulk capacity, then sells it at a discount to anyone who wants cheaper telephony.

Ninety-five percent saving?

Such a company is Telewise International, which claims it can cut your roaming costs by 80 percent. As a fairly extreme example, the company says that a British mobile phone user roaming in France, Germany and Italy and receiving calls for one hour a day over 14 days would be hit by a bill from the biggest three UK mobile operators averaging about $7800. Telewise International would provide roaming over the same period for $344, a saving of 95 percent and would also save 68 percent on outgoing calls from the same traveler.

That’s the theory, anyway. But if you try to check out the cost of roaming through mobile operators, you meet the first law of telecom pricing which is, whatever happens don’t let customers make a fair comparison of price and quality. Tariffs are complex, multi-tiered and for large volume users, negotiable. Still, Telewise International does offer an extremely competitive sta

ndard tariff for roaming.

This month, Telewise International is launching its roaming service in 85 countries, including Hong Kong. Anyone with a GSM phone can use it by plugging in Telewise International’s SIM (Subscriber Identity Module, the microchip that stores your details and the network you use), purchased under the brand name ‘King of SIM’. Wherever the users roam in the world, the numbers they dial will be connected at low cost through Telewise International’s virtual network. After each call, the user will receive a text message confirming its duration and cost.

Although you can buy many SIM roaming cards for individual countries, to use them you will need t register on a different network in every country you visit, and the number that other people must use to contact you will also change in every country. “In contrast, the King of SIM card enables the traveler to make all the calls through the same Telewise International network, and also be called form anywhere using the same number, whatever country you visit,” says Norman Lao, Telewise International’s CEO.

Telewise International customers currently call a UK number to reach the company’s network, but soon they will be able to use local numbers in many cities, including Hong Kong. Roaming travelers will then be able to access Telewise International’s global network through a convenient local number, and other people will be able to call them form most place using a local number.

Retain your own mobile number

Another innovation in the pipeline is to enable travelers to retain their own mobile number while roaming overseas. Supposing you are in Hong Kong and you wish to call you colleague who in roaming in Canada. You simply dial his Hong Kong mobile number, which automatically forwards calls to your colleague in Canada at very low cost.

Says Raymond Ngan, Telewise International’s chief operations officer: “Telewise International’s King of SIM roaming service will be especially valuable for roaming in the European market, where visitors frequently cross the borders of up to 14 nations. Telewise International will also focus on markets such as India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Africa, where mobile phones are popular, but roaming can be costly”.

The King of SIM card will cost about $550, including $70 of tariff value, which can be increased with a ‘top-up card’ or over the Internet. The roaming number assigned can be retained by the users if the card is renewed within six months.

Cut-price roaming is just one result of the worldwide liberalization of the telecommunications industry, which started in the US in the 1980s. Before that, most government used national security as an excuse to create monopolies that tended to be over-staffed and complacent. It took weeks to get a phone line and technical innovation was example, Hong Kong’s OFTA (Telecommunications Authority) estimates that the average charge for overseas calls was over $7 a minute as late as 1995, whereas today, shrewd subscribers can call some popular overseas destinations for $0.25 or less.

Monopoly pricing was first breached by a clever invention known as callback and Telewise International was one of the companies formed to utilize it: “We thought customers should have the right to enjoy benefits brought to them by new telecommunications technology offered by independent MVNOs. Through their service, customers won’t be exploited by high roaming service fees. We believed competition would benefit both customers and the industry.” says Lao.

Tallback vendors buy or lease international carrier lines at low commercial rates and then resell them as very cheap IDD services. The customers first call the callback service number through their regular phone companies, then hang up without waiting for any response. The callback network detects the subscribers’ numbers and calls them back on its own low-cost line.

Companies such Telewise International helped create a competitive telephony market: “This low-cost competition drove the former monopoly companies crazy, but they could not stop it, economic levels.” says Lao.

Lao’s company claims a technical edge in callback services, for while most competitors offer their users only a single local access number which may often be engaged, Telewise International provides a unique number to each user, so the service is always available. Another advantage is that the company’s Travelers Calling Card can be used in 120 countries, using the same network with a different access number. Globally, Televise offers about 50 callback cards, including those that access its own virtual network and those which it distributes.

The Hong Kong telephony market is very competitive, but that does not neon that everyone gets cheap calls. Residential phone users who dial a three-digit prefix number to obtain a 'promotional' rate will still commonly pay $10- 20 a minute to phone most countries.

Voice over Internet Protocol

Telewise International also offers Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a newer technology that is making inroads into traditional telephone services. Until recently, the global PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) used switches to link the two parties for the duration of every phone call. But it is much more efficient to convert the voice messages into the same digital bits and bytes as computer data, then send them over the Internet, or a similar network, in 'packets' of fixed length, which arc reassembled into a conversation at the receiving end.

Since most people and companies have broadband Internet connections, it is possible to use this for telephony without paying a phone company at all. Telewise International offers a service called TeleFirst VoIP, which can be used by downloading software from the company's website at Call28.com and buying a VoIP card with an account number and a password.

The user can use a traditional phone, or purchase an IP phone from Telewise International. A company that has a broadband Internet connection to its office LAN can plug any number of IP phones into the network to eliminate its overseas call tariffs.

If two people or companies located in different countries both use TeleFirst Vo1P to call each other, no conventional telephone tariff will be payable. Telewise International charges $0.196 per minute for VoIP calls to any country, so if your regular telephone company is charging you, say $15.80 to certain destinations, you can save 99 percent on those calls. If the VoIP caller needs to phone someone on the PSTN, the call must at some point go through Telewise International' gateway to the conventional telephone network, but this will be billed at a rate lower than international telephone companies.

The caller saves money, but there is a tradeoff. The good voice quality will deteriorate if the Internet is busy. Emergency services cannot be called on Telewise International's VoIP phones and the phones will not operate if the power supply fails. Faxes do not transmit well over VoIP lines, although this can be fixed with special hardware installed at both ends of a connection.

On the positive side, VoIP is compatible with computer technology and therefore provides many advanced f turns, such as racy and cheap conference calling and video telephony. A small software program can turn your laptop (or any PC) into a phone which can be plugged into the Internet to reach your corporate network from anywhere in the world. VoIP is the future of telephony. There arc many VoIP services on the market, including big ones like Skype, MSN Messenger and Vonage, so it would pay to compare a prices and service quality.

China market

Telewise International was founded in the UK in 1998 by Norman Lao and two partners, who have expertise in IT and telecommunications industries. The company prospered, to become the biggest supplier of calling cards for the Chinese community in Europe. In locating Telewise International's Asian headquarters in Hong Kong, Lao obviously has an eye on the China market.

But how does Chins react to Telewise International’s gung ho free market tactics? Says Lao, “Twenty years ago, telecom monopolies were linked to the government and it was difficult for a small company like Telewise International to enter such a sensitive industry. Now, the market operates freely and it will be more open in future, thanks to Chinas commitment to the WTO." China’s rapid progress is reflected in phone tariffs, continues Lao: "Four years ago, a $280 calling card to China provided 165 minutes, whereas today, it buys 3,000 minutes."

They say you only get what you pay for, which is obviously untrue for telephone customers – if you look around, you can always get a better deal. But your first priority should he quality, because a cheap phone service that drive you mad is not a bargain, especially if you are in business and it loses you customers. And while we may criticize the big telcos for their sky-high tariffs, endless silly promotions and unfair mufti-tiered pricing, when it comes to providing a phone service, they can be very good at their jobs, especially in Hong Kong. So the moral is, before you sign any long-term telephone contracts, talk to existing customers to ensure that the service is what you want. Also, when you we overseas telephony services, make sure you do some comparison shopping.

Media: Hong Kong Business