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In
this Issue.....
•
Letter from the President
• Mobile
Services Spotlight
• Zedge.net
• News
from Around the Globe
• Mobile
Money Transfer
• Getting
to Know Us: Meet Christophe Justens
• Upcoming
Conventions & Trade Shows
Letter
from the President
 Thank
you all for the enthusiastic response to our
first issue of The Carrier Connection. Congratulations
go out to Emmanuel Petraz of Colt Telecom who
won the iPod nano in our drawing from the last
edition.
We look forward to seeing many
old friends and meeting with new partners at
Intelsat GTM in Washington, DC. I encourage
everyone to stop by our hospitality suite in
the Wardman Central Tower, Suite 9066, anytime
during the show.
In this edition, we are highlighting
three exciting new services for mobile operator
partners. Two of these new services enable operators
to access revenues from their immigrant citizens
living abroad. The third new service provides
reciprocal network discounts.
IDT Management continues to
be sought after to speak at trade shows worldwide.
Look for highlights inside. Also, check our
News from Around the Globe which highlights
the expansion of our partner relationships and
the build-out of our network infrastructure.
Additionally, we will introduce you to Christophe
Justens, our Regional Director of MENA and Director
of Mobile Services. Christophe heads our office
in Dubai.
As we enhance our product offerings
to better serve carriers worldwide, IDT remains
committed to being your complete solutions provider.
I hope that you enjoy this edition of our newsletter
and look forward to seeing you at GTM.
Warm
regards,
Avi Lazar
President of Wholesale and Emerging International
Businesses
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Mobile
Services Spotlight
IDT continues
to innovate with new services designed to maximize
Mobile Operator (MO) revenue.
The 3 products highlighted in this issue are:
- IDT
World M.A.P. (Mobile Affinity Program) –
your subscribers get discounted rates when
calling the IDT Network
- International
Mobile Top Up – immigrants and travelers
abroad purchase calling time for your subscribers
back home
- International
Prepaid Calling Card – your private label
international calling card sold globally across
IDT’s worldwide distribution network
IDT World M.A.P.
IDT World M.A.P. Service
offers discounted rates to MO subscribers who
use our respective global networks. Discounts
are available network-to-network or on a subscriber
specific basis. This unique service benefits
both carriers and end users with lower rates.
Benefits include increased traffic, higher revenue
and increased market share. The service is easy
to implement and provides a unique product differentiator.
Here
is how it works:
- IDT and MO establish interconnect
and termination agreement with in-network
preferential rates
- MO’s subscribers get
a preferred rate to IDT’s Global Mobile
network
- IDT Mobile subscribers
get a preferred rate to MO’s network
- Subscribers make calls
as usual
International Mobile Top
Up
With IDT International
Mobile Top Up, your subscribers can have their
friends and family living outside your territory
purchase Top Up funds for them. This unique
feature allows MOs to sell beyond their domestic
market and reach a new untapped revenue source.
International Top Up is your way to tap into
the $250B International Remittance business
and a new opportunity for minute and revenue
growth. International Mobile Top Up is a featured
product of the IDT Transaction Services Group.
Here
is how it works:
- Friend
or family member purchases Top Up funds for
subscriber at an IDT Point of Sale, via Home
Country IVR or ITFS 800 number
- Purchaser
receives authorization PIN(s)
- Purchaser communicates
the PIN to your subscriber
- Subscriber makes calls
as usual
International Prepaid
Calling Card
With a Private Label Prepaid
Calling Card program, you can tap into money
spent by your home country’s immigrants
living abroad. The MO leverages its name recognition
abroad, attracting ‘familiar’ customers
to purchase branded calling cards. IDT manages
the production, distribution and back end transaction
processing, leveraging our expertise in transactional
and prepaid card services.
Here is how it works:
- Out of Country Purchaser
purchases calling card at an IDT Point of
Sale
- Purchaser receives authorization
PIN(s)
- Purchaser accesses IDT Platform
using Toll Free services
- Calls are terminated via
IDT or the MO, depending on the MO’s
needs
The IDT Platform provides IVR,
account management, fraud control and customer
service (optional). With a Private Label Calling
Card program, you can acquire new revenue and
market share. International Prepaid Calling
Card is a featured product of the IDT Transaction
Services Group.
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Zedge.net
 IDT
has acquired Zedge.net, a social networking
community. Zedge.net is a worldwide destination
for creating, sharing and talking about mobile
content. Zedge is a fast-growing user community
with over 4 million members. It boasts a library
of over 500,000 pieces of content.
We look
forward to speaking with you about the many
ways to offer Zedge as a value- added service
to your customers.
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News
from Around the Globe
The
Americas
In January, SVP Vince Tozzi was a featured
presenter at the Telcap Caribbean trade show
in Barbados. His topic, "Implementing Effective
Partnership Strategies in the Caribbean,”
provided insight into the complex dynamics of
today’s telecom market and elicited positive
reactions from attendees.
IDT representatives
Rene Moya and Ricardo Vergili recently attended
the Triple Play and Convergence trade show in
Cartagena, Colombia where IDT’s newly released
service for MSOs received an enthusiastic response.
Cable MSOs will find that IDT
is uniquely positioned to help them compete
in the international retail telecom space with
our Managed Services product. Ask your IDT Sales
Representative about our Retail Call Plan Management
Service for MSOs.
Europe / Middle East / Africa
(EMEA)
IDT and the
Community
Our London-based team – including personnel
from Commercial, Commercial Operations and Finance
– participated in Red Nose Day, raising
funds for Comic Relief charity. Comic Relief
is a British charity organization, founded in
the UK in 1985 in response to famine in Ethiopia.
It now raises money for countries in Africa
and for disadvantaged people in the UK.
IDT
Expands in MEAF
We
proudly announce the development
of new partnerships
with PTTs, carriers and
other service providers in the following countries:
the DRC, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Saudi
Arabia, Tanzania and Togo.
Asia
- IDT
Asia can now serve VoIP customers better than
before. IDT is able to implement VoIP interconnections
in-house and provide more efficient implementations
with our regional VoIP partners. These enhancements
come as a result of the merger of Net2Phone
into the IDT Network.
- IDT’s
Australia PoP came online in January. It becomes
our 5th Asia interconnection PoP following
Manila, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo. The Australia
PoP will facilitate wholesale and retail operations
in the Australasia region.
- IDT
has recently taken the full 6th floor of Luk
Kwok Centre as our new, larger home. IDT Hong
Kong will continue to be the headquarters
of our Asia operations and the brain behind
many new Asia retail and wholesale products
to be launched in 2007. Our new address is:
IDT Telecom Asia Pacific
Limited
6th Floor, Luk Kwok Centre
72 Gloucester Road
Wan Chai
Hong Kong
VoIP Services Update
The demand for IDT's Hosted VoIP Solutions continues
to grow. To date, we have more than 20 partnerships
in the Americas alone, and anticipate similar
growth in Asia, Africa and the Middle East as
telecom operators look to add retail VoIP to
their portfolio of services. Ask your IDT representative
how your company can take advantage of IDT's
Hosted VoIP Solutions.
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Mobile
Money Transfer
The mobile wallet is an idea
whose time is fast approaching. Recent activities
among wireless companies, retailers and financial
institutions have helped consumers to adopt
spending using mobile phones. Agreements among
banks, credit card companies, and carriers across
the globe indicate a coming industry shift.
One of the strongest indications
of this shift is the GSM Association Global
Money Transfer Pilot. This program is “aimed
at tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile
communications to enable the world's 200 million
international migrant workers to easily and
securely send remittances to their dependents,
many of whom don't have bank accounts.”
(GSM Association Press Release 2007)
The Money Transfer Pilot is
led by a group of 19 mobile operators with networks
in over 100 countries representing more than
600 million consumers. The GSMA believes that
the program could double the number of recipients
of international remittances to more than 1.5
billion. This could help to quadruple the size
of the international remittances market to more
than $1 trillion by 2012. (GSM Association Press
Release 2007)
Two carriers that are leading
the way to mobile money transfer are SMART,
with its Padala service, and Vodafone, in collaboration
with Citigroup, which recently announced its
M-Pesa service. Both programs enable mobile
subscribers to receive money transfers via a
mobile wallet account. Vodafone announced that
if the M-Pesa pilot between UK and Kenya is
successful, it would expand to include transfers
to Poland and Lithuania. Vodafone is also conducting
a pilot in Afghanistan before a formal launch.
“The combination of Vodafone’s international
mobile network and Citigroup’s global footprint
will create a solution that will benefit communities
that use money transfer services worldwide,”
said Francesco Vanni d'Archirafi, Chairman of
Citibank Europe. (Computer Business Review On
Line, February 2007)
One of the biggest opportunities
for the growth of mobile money transfer is as
an alternative solution to the high cost of
standard international remittance. Today’s
average cost of international remittance is
12% of principal. To truly add value, it will
be essential to develop efficient, low cost
mobile money solutions. The World Bank estimates
that if its New Zealand-Tonga cost elasticity
analysis were applied “to all developing
countries, a reduction in remittance cost from
12 percent to (say) 6 percent could result in
an 11 percent increase in annual remittance
flows.” (The World Bank, Economic Implications
of Remittances and Migration 2006)
SMART has already taken notice
of this opportunity. While fees at origination
vary from country to country, in Hong Kong fees
are about $2 and in the Philippines fees are
just 1 percent plus the cost of a text message.
SMART has formed remittance partnerships with
companies in Hong Kong, Greece, Ireland, Japan,
Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
(The World Bank, Economic Implications of Remittances
and Migration 2006)
Clearly, mobile money transfer
is fast becoming an opportunity for the mobile
industry with the potential to provide Mobile
Operators a new source of international revenue.
IDT is already well positioned with the necessary
infrastructure and know-how to facilitate Mobile
Money Transfer service based upon our experience
with International Mobile Top Up. Learn more
about this and our developing product line in
our next issue.
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Getting
To Know Us:
Christophe Justens
Christophe Justens began his
career with IDT in October 2004, concentrating
on launching IDT Mobile in Europe. Christophe
then ventured into the Middle East and Africa,
bringing IDT’s suite of services including
voice, messaging, transaction services and more,
to this new, dynamic market.
Tell
us about your current role.
As Director of Mobile Services and Regional
Director of MENA, I have a dual role. In the
Mobile Services sphere, we have built an extensive
network of international mobile interconnects,
and we have created a team of experts to support
our partnerships with the mobile operators.
As RD of MENA, we have relocated to Dubai, and
our aim here is to broaden our relationships
with the regional PTTs, Mobile Operators and
other licensed operators. I help them identify
the opportunities to grow their international
business and demonstrate how IDT can enable
them to capture new revenue and market share.
How has this new location
helped to serve our customers?
I think it is fair to say Dubai is a true hub
for the entire region and, in that spirit, it
is the ideal place for IDT to serve our growing
customer base. The telecoms industry in this
region is very vibrant, and our customers and
partners are faced with challenges posed by
developing liberalization and competition. With
close proximity, we better understand these
challenges, can uncover new opportunities, and
are better equipped to help our customers reap
the benefits from the international telecoms
market..
 What
has your group accomplished since the office
opened?
I
don’t know where to start! We now have
interconnect partnerships with mobile operators
across the entire EMEA regions. Together with
our team of Business Managers, we have succeeded
in increasing interconnect revenues for operators
in countries as diverse as Lithuania, Jordan,
Pakistan and Benin, to name just a few. With
our massive volumes of international minutes,
we have built bilateral relationships that enable
us to decrease the price pressure on our partners’
inbound termination and to simultaneously offer
them a competitive edge via our global termination
services.
In
addition, we have seen great interest in our
intercarrier messaging portfolio, and to that
end, we are currently implementing the first
of many SMS/MMS service agreements to be signed
in the region.
Lastly, we are also launching a private label
calling card in the US for one of our mobile
operator partners to enable them to access this
international spend by their US immigrants calling
their relatives back home.
These are but a few examples that demonstrate
the great diversity in solutions and services
that we continue to bring to our partners.
How do you see the future
for IDT in your regions?
We are here for the long term, and the country
expertise and mobile services expertise we have
developed is now recognized in the industry.
The real promise for our long term prospects
here is the continuous increase in the quantity
and quality of partners seeking our services
and by our proven success in helping them to
become stronger and more profitable companies.
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Upcoming
Conventions & Trade Shows
IDT Representatives
will attend the following conventions and trade
shows:
Asian
Carriers’ Conference 2007
May 15 –18, 2007
Mactan Island, Cebu, Philippines
GSM
East and Central Africa
May 16 –17, 2007
Nairobi (Kenya)
GTM
2007
May 21 – 24, 2007
Washington, DC
VoIP
World MENA
June 17 – 20, 2007
Dubai (UAE)
Capacity
CEE
June 18 – 19, 2007
Prague, Czech Republic
GSM
West Africa
June 19 – 20, 2007
Dakar (Senegal)
CommunicAsia
2007
June 19 – 22, 2007
Singapore
GSM/3G
Middle East & Gulf
September 2 – 3, 2007
Dubai (UAE)
GITEX
& GulfComms 2007
September 8 –12, 2007
Dubai (UAE)
Carriers
World
September 25 – 28, 2007
London, United Kingdom
Comptel
Fall 2007 Convention & Expo
October 7 – 10, 2007
Dallas, TX
Von
Fall 2007
October 29 – November 1, 2007
Boston, MA
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