iTWire - gotalk buys Telstra's prepaid calling cards

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gotalk buys Telstra's prepaid calling cards

by Stuart Corner
Friday, 01 June 2007
! gotalk is to purchase Telstra's international calling cards operation which sells the 'Say G'day' and 'Super Buzz' branded cards and has a customer base of around 110,000 users. The deal gives gotalk access to Telstra's distribution network of electronic terminal and Australia Post outlets. Related stories Telstra non-meekly states separation sucks Sybase 365 bags Brito Scoop: Palm’s 3G Treo Pro goes blue, gets ticked off by Telstra Apple heading for court in another iPhone 3G potential class action Vehicle tracking provider admits to being Big Brother The cards are prepaid remote stored value (RSV) calling cards, available in nine language options (English, French Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese Korean and Thai). They are available in three formats – physical card, electronic voucher and online and can be used for local, long distance, mobile – including calls to and from global satellite services, international calls in Australia and calls from most touchtone phones. Telstra will continue to provide its Telstra Phonecard that provides people with pre-paid calling cards to make local and international calls through its payphones and the Telstra PhoneAway card designed primarily to enable people to make calls from overseas and have them charged to their Telstra account. According to gotalk, "the phone card market in Australia is highly competitive and is one whose scale delivers significant commercial advantage." It estimates that there are around 80 different competing phone cards on offer from at least eight suppliers. Gotalk claims to be by far the leading phone card distributor in Australia, and incidentally New Zealand." CEO Steve Picton has quoted gotalk phone card sales at more than $8 million a month – and the purchase of the Telstra International Calling Cards will obviously improve that income. The deal comes just days after on its main rivals, ranked at number two or three, Tel.Pacific, has announced plans to raise $5 million through an IPO. In its prospectus. It quoted Paul Budde Communications putting the number of prepaid card providers a around 20, and Telstra as the lead player with around 20 percent of the RSV card market (as distinct from payphone cards) followed by gotalk and Tel.Pacific. gotalk recently launched a prepaid iBurst broadband wireless service, a prepaid mobile service which combines international calling and a prepaid ringtone/music download service in conjunction Universal Music. {moscomment} Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment! Tags See All Tags Stuart Corner Telecommunications Telstra Get stories like this delivered daily - FREE - subscribe now