European MVNO Lebara enters Australian market

Stuart Corner
Monday, 30 March 2009 06:20

IT Industry - Market

Lebara Mobile, a European mobile service provider whose focus is providing low cost international calls from mobiles for expatriate communities, has launched its service in Australia, on the Vodafone Network.

The Lebara service is a pre-paid SIM-only service: you buy a Lebara SIM and can use it in any cellphone that is not locked to a particular network. Existing numbers can be ported to the Lebara service.

Overseas calls vary enormously in price with the cheapest being to China where the cost is 5 cents per minute to fixed or mobile phones. USA is nine cents to fixed or mobile and Vietnam 12 and 19.  The company has not offered any comparative pricing information against alternative services.

Lebara charges 20 cents per minute for calls to Australian fixed numbers and 20 cents per minute to mobile numbers, both with 15 cent flagfall. Calls to other Lebara numbers are free for the first 10 minutes then 20 cents per minute plus 15 cent flag fall.

In other countries zero cost Lebara-to-Lebara calling is available across borders and founder Yoganathan Ratheesan said this would be extended to Australia in Q3 of 2009. Also, at present Australia Lebara customers are not able to roam overseas, but Ratheesan said this functionality would also be added later.

Lebara is initially offering customer support in Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Arabic and English with other languages to follow.

SIM cards can be purchased and recharged online from www.lebara-mobile.com.au and Ratheesan said the company was putting in place a network of about 3800 retail outlets, mostly in Melbourne and Sydney where the majority of overseas born Australian live, from which SIMs could be bought and recharged.

These will include service stations, grocers, newsagents offering the e-pay service that provides recharges for other prepaid mobile offerings in Australia

Lebara achieves its low cost international calls by taking these off the Vodafone network and routing them overseas via its own switch. It appears to be positioning itself in competition with prepaid phone cards saying there is no need to enter the long access codes typically required to access overseas numbers using such cards.

Australia is the eighth country to get Lebara services and the first outside Europe. The company was founded in 2001 and now operates in The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Spain. Annualised revenues are in excess of $A400 million and the company claims in excess of three million customers.

Lebara was ranked the fourth fastest growing private company in the UK in the Sunday Times 'Fast Track 100' listing in 2006.