Gotalk lets users transfer prepaid minutes to The Philippines

Stuart Corner
Friday, 31 August 2007 05:42

Your IT - Home IT

Australian calling cad operator, gotalk, has struck a deal with Philippines telco, Globe Telecom that will enable gotalk customers to buy call credits in Australia and transfer these to friends and relatives in the Philippines.

Holders of globetalk's 'Sariling Atin and 'It's Green' phonecards in Australia and 'Happy Calling' and 'Ratesaver' cards in New Zealand will be able to transfer call credits of between $5 and $50 to accounts with Globe Telecom. Globe is the second largest mobile phone company in the Philippines with more than 16.9 million mobile subscribers.

Gotalk's deal with Globe Telecom follows its June 1 announcemen t of an agreement to purchase Telstra's prepaid international calling cards, Say G'day and Super Buzz which service a customer base of 110,000 international phone card users in nine ethnic languages - English, French Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese Korean and Thai.

CEO Steve Picton said the Globe deal was "another strategic move by gotalk to consolidate its leading position in the multimillion dollar ethnic telco market in Australia and New Zealand."

He added: "According to the latest statistics, over 22 percent of the Australian population of 21 million was born overseas; and almost 14 percent of the population was born in a non-English speaking country. According to the census, 18 percent of the population was born in Australia but had at least one parent who was born overseas. In 2006, almost 16 percent of the population spoke a language other than English at home.

"This means there are several million people in Australia who need to make frequent and regular international phone calls to friends and family overseas – and this is a growth market in which gotalk has particular expertise."