Asia to get new meta-operator

Seven mobile operators in Asia-Pacific have joined forces in a new alliance, aiming to crank up the clout and appeal of service providers in the region.

Under the deal inked on Tuesday, Bharti of India, Globe Telecom of the Philippines, Maxis of Malaysia, Australia's Optus, Singapore's SingTel, Taiwan Cellular and Indonesia's Telkomsel will together inject $30m to $40m to set up Bridge Mobile.

The bulk of the initial investment will be used to build a common infrastructure platform for the operators and to develop services and products.

"Compared to Europe and the US, the Asia-Pacific region lacks access to new technologies," said Lim Chuan Poh, chief executive officer of SingTel Mobile and the newly appointed chairman of Bridge. According to him, this is because technology vendors are more inclined towards the homogenous markets in Europe and North America, rather than Asia-Pacific where standards and development can be fragmented between countries.

With the alliance, he hopes to strengthen the cause of various operators in the region by touting a larger subscriber base and greater standardisation.

"We are trying to tell the technology players and vendors that we are not just a bigger customer," said Lim. "We are a customer that can give you a critical mass to develop new services, new technologies."

This, he believes, will give the partners an edge over domestic rivals.

"If you simply buy something at a lower price, you are not truly able to differentiate your service offering," he continued. "But if you can encourage technology partners to actually co-develop technology and services with you, then that kind of differentiation will be a lot more valuable."

As a result of the joint venture, alliance members will also offer more seamless roaming and interoperability, he said. For example, subscribers will be able to top up their pre-paid cards through partner networks even when overseas, a service not offered today.

For Bharti Tele-Ventures, which derives 10 per cent of its revenues from roaming, these are significant benefits, said Manoj Kohli, president of Mobility.

"There are 20 million non-resident Indians who live outside India, and about one-third of them stay in Asia-Pacific. Eighty to 90 per cent of Indian market is pre-paid," he said.

The seven operators have a combined base of 56 million subscribers in the region. According to Lim, Bridge Mobile is looking to expand its footprint across Asia "as far as possible and as fast as possible". It will, however, be limiting participation in each country.

"We will have one mobile operator per country. The whole basis of this is to deliver service differentiation for our partners, so that they can, in turn, be able to generate and create value in their home markets," he said.

SingTel has stakes in Bharti, Globe and Optus. Thailand's Advance Info Service (AIS), also an affiliate of the company, will be joining the alliance at a later date, he added.