Asian ops form second alliance

Seven Asian operators today announced the formation of an alliance to enhance competitiveness in the international roaming market and deliver corporate services across the Asia-Pacific region.

The Asia Pacific Mobile Alliance boasts a combined customer base of about 100 million subscribers over eight countries and regions, but plans to expand its members over time.

The founding members are: Far EasTone (Taiwan), Hutchison Essar (India), Hutchison Telecommunications Limited (Hong Kong and Macau), KTF (South Korea), NTT DoCoMo (Japan), PT Indosat (Indonesia) and StarHub (Singapore).

The alliance will promote voice, video and data roaming via members’ GSM/GPRS/WCDMA networks, with an intention to launch roaming via HSDPA once the market is ready. These initiatives are targeted for launch in the latter half of 2006.

The alliance also aims to create a Virtual Home Environment amongst customers of member operators, so that they are able to experience seamless, convenient mobile-related services when they roam. Such services include caller ID and short codes to allow quick and easy connection to their home country operator’s voice mail and customer support.

The formation of the Asia Pacific Mobile Alliance marks the arrival of the region’s second such partnership. Last year the Bridge Mobile Alliance launched its first services – seamless GPRS and MMS roaming and a common prepaid roaming top up service.

The Bridge Alliance’s founding operator members are Airtel in India, CSL in Hong Kong, Globe Telecom in the Philippines, Maxis in Malaysia, SingTel Mobile in Singapore, SingTel Optus in Australia, Taiwan Mobile in Taiwan and Telkomsel in Indonesia. But the organisation has now opened its doors to the vendor community, with the inclusion of Chinese vendor ZTE, Sweden’s Ericsson and US manufacturer Motorola.