People Telecom's mobile trifecta: Vodafone, Optus and now Telstra

Stuart Corner
Monday, 08 September 2008 11:59

Your IT - Home IT

People Telecom has signed a wholesale deal with Telstra to resell Telstra's 2G mobile services and is now able to offer business customers services on Vodafone, Optus and Telstra, all on one bill.

People Telecom CEO John Stanton told iTWire: "I think we are the only service provider able to do this" He said that the agreement had been signed some time ago (it was foreshadowed by iTWire in July ) and details of the new services were going up on the website "as we speak."

Stanton said the agreement completed the supply arrangements underpinning People Telecom's move to operate as a multi-network mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) – able to offer services on all the major mobile networks in Australia. The agreement with Telstra will significantly expand the scope and flexibility of People Telecom's current mobile offerings, and give People Telecom customers – both at the retail and wholesale level - the opportunity to enjoy the unparalleled reach of the Telstra network."

People Telecom set in train its transition to being a multi-network MVNO in July when it scrapped its six year direct relationship with Optus in favour of taking Optus services via Optus wholesaler, M2 Telecommunications . That deal was followed by a wholesale deal with Vodafone, announced in August.

With deal People Telecom is able to provide services via the Telstra matching the coverage of Telstra's much trumpeted Next G network, but only using 2G SIM cards. So they are denied high speed data services and video calling, but voice services would be almost identical to 3G.

Stanton said many clients look People Telecom mobile services from more than one carrier. "Sometimes they want to give executives 3G phones, but they don't want to give these to everybody so they can't spend to much time using data services."