Commoditel buys 20,000 Vodafone customers

Stuart Corner
Friday, 13 October 2006 15:09

IT Industry - Deals

Commoditel has made its debut in post-paid mobile phone services with the acquisition of some 20,000 subscribers from Vodafone Australia. The move follows its acquisition of AAPT's prepaid customer base in December 2005.

The customers in question had been signed up to the Vodafone network by Martin Dawes, Nomad and PowerTel, but, unlike customers served by Vodafone MVNOs, were provided with Vodafone branded services. However management and servicing of these customers, including billing, has been handled by UCMS for Vodafone.

Vodafone Australia spokesman, Greg Spears, told iTWire "We believe UCMS will continue to handle those customers on behalf of Commoditel. We will be writing to them before the end of the month, but they will stay on the same plans, the same rates, the same billing frequency and keep the same customer service number. Our aim is to make the change as smooth as possible."

Mark Machet, head of wholesale for Vodafone said that, historically, Vodafone had gone to market in three ways: direct, arms length through MVNOs and an intermediate way in which the customers were signed up by third parties, such as Martin Dawes et al, but serviced as Vodafone customers.

He said that the company was moving away from this third channel. and as agreements with resellers came to an end looked at whether it was more appropriate to transition customers to full Vodafone customers or transition them to an MVNO. He added that the 20,000 sold to Commoditel represented almost the last of these customers.

"These customers are managed under a different billing system [UCMS] so we have weigh up transitioning them to our billing system. Sometimes they are on plans set up five years ago and that's one of the things driving the equation," Machet said. He added that Vodafone had been approached by a number of MVNOs with an interest in the 20,000 customers.