Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Prepaid International has launched a service in Australia that will enable any service provider selling prepaid mobile services to offer recharges via third party web sites.
It has already signed up Optus, 3, Virgin, Boost and GoTalk whose services can be recharged via a portal on the ninemsn web site. This service has been operating since July, but now Prepaid International has teamed up with web hosting specialist Hostway to rollout the service to other sites.
Hostworks will provide a managed service that delivers the Prepaid International software to web portals and to other available channels. It has entered into a revenue share agreement with Prepaid International that it says "removes upfront costs for breakthrough businesses with high growth potential in return for a share of future revenues," and is working with Prepaid International to recruit more high-volume web portals to sell recharges.
Once Prepaid International and Hostworks have recruited additional web portals in Australia to demonstrate the business model, they say they will seek to develop international markets. Although Prepaid International is presently selling only prepaid mobile recharges, the company says it can offer any type of prepaid recharge product, including music and gift vouchers, debit cards, toll road tokens and non-allocated-seating event tickets. Also it says, "the hosted prepaid service can also deliver point-of-sale recharge sales for retail outlets, intensifying competition in that market."
This would put in head to head competition with The Blackhawk Network – a wholly owned subsidiary of US Supermarket giant Safeway - that plans to launch in Australia its Gift Card Mall (store-on-a-stand) concept before Christmas. The Mall is in-store display stand or kiosk large enough to carry hundreds of third party branded cards in a wide range of categories: sports, telecom, open loop gift (cards that can be used at thousands of locations), theatre, movie, sporting, and event tickets and other reloadable products.
According to Hostworks, the global market for mobile phone recharges alone is estimated to exceed $200 billion a year, and prepaid mobile phone services are used by nine million Australians, accounting for 51 percent of the mobile phone market. Australian prepaid users spend an average of $30 a month valuing this segment of the market at more than $3.2 billion a year.
David Bass
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