Just a reminder to all of my regular readers, don't forget to vote in our online survey "What Is Your Biggest Concern With The Prepaid Business?"
Just one month after reaching settlements with 10 major prepaid phone card companies, Attorney General Bill McCollum has reached a settlement with an 11th company, Florida based Cinco Telecom Corp. (dba Orbitel). The company agreed to revise it's advertising to be more reflective of the actual minutes delivered and also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the Florida Attorney Generals office to help cover the costs of this year long investigation.
The settlement is in line with what the 10 other companies agreed to and Cinco Telecom, while a little late in their settlement, was stated to have been very cooperative with the state agency in all of their investigations. The company, like the other 10, has also agreed to auditing for the next 3 years to ensure that they maintain a fair and honest advertising practice. It is not know at this point if other companies are still under investigation at this time.
In a move to help expand their sales efforts, Globe Telecom announced last week that they would begin selling phone cards in the United States via a partnership with the popular Filipino grocery chain Seafood City Supermarkets. The grocery chain has 16 locations in the US, primarily on the west coast in California and Nevada.
While the deal is not huge and likely will not deliver huge numbers, it is indicative of a trend with worldwide carriers trying to expand their reach into the US market by leveraging their brand name that are well known to expatriates of those countries. We saw Blackstone do this before with their ETB cards and also have seen other similar offers from other worldwide PTTs.
There is no doubt that we will be hearing more about Globe's play in the US market with eventual expansion into the East Coast areas like NY and New Jersey.
Read the Full Article or visist Globe's USA Phone Card website at: http://www.globekababayan.com.ph/Articles.aspx?aid=158
I thought it fitting to write a post about the fact that Intelecard no longer exists on the day when their rival the Prepaid Press Expo kicks off!
I received an email from Intelecard last week announcing that Intelecard is now a part of Wireless Dealer Magazine and sure enough if you type in http://www.intelecard.com/ you get redirected to the Wireless Dealer Magazine website. I can't say this is a surprise or a disappointment since the Magazine has been almost non-existent for the last year or so and their web site looked like it was maintained by my 2 year old nephew. There just wasn't enough room in this shrinking business for two major publications and expo's and the Prepaid Press just seemed to want it more.
While this does remove a major press source and advertising channel for many of us, I am sure the Prepaid Press will more than pick up the slack and improve their publication and expo even more now that they are the only game in town! But advertisers beware, now that they are a monopoly in this area they might find reason to increase their advertising rates... but I hope not!
Well since the Prepaid Press Expo is now the only pure prepaid Expo left, you don't want to miss the upcoming show! It is only days away now and will be held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas August 19th through 21st so be sure to make your travel bookings now!
The schedule for the show looks like this:
Exhibit Hall Hours:
Wednesday, August 20, 2008: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Thursday, August 21, 2008: 10:00am – 3:00pm
Toga Party at Garden of the Gods Pool (Caesars Palace):
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 8:00pm –10:00pm
Conference Schedule:
8:30am – 5:00pm (Tues-Wed-Thurs)
Here is a cool commercial by CVT prepaid for the Pica Pica phone card.
Here is a Spanish language commercial from UTA for the Porra Mexicana phone card.
There are rumors coming out that STI might be in talks with CVT Prepaid about a potential buyout. Not sure if STI wants to buy out the company or just buy their brands and active phone cards.
While I have not heard anything about CVT being in any kind of dire financial difficulties, in today's shrinking prepaid phone card market a buyout to gain market share might actually make sense. IDT still leads the way in terms of cards sold but a merger between these two companies would surely put STI at or at least close to the top!
Other than this I really don't have many details to share but stay tuned to my blog for updates!
Viscom International Inc., an Atlanta based provider of phone cards and marketing services, created a new marketing gimmick to cash in on the recent bad press the phone card business has been receiving. They have created the first phone card "Consumer Bill of Rights" to help set a new standard on the phone card business.
Their Bill of Rights goes as follows:
-- The consumer will always receive the number of minutes that
is prompted on a call.
There will NEVER be a voice prompt given on a phone card that does not deliver what the consumer expects on that call -- the number of minutes on the voice prompt will ALWAYS be the number of minutes delivered on that call. If the voice prompt says 60 minutes, that does not mean 58 minutes.
-- Viscom fee information is 100% transparent.
All fees or other methods of reducing the original value or remaining balance will be disclosed on each card, rate posters, Viscom's Web site, and other point-of-sale materials.
-- Viscom products will be easy to use and understand.
Viscom products will always be easy to use (access numbers clearly identified), easy to understand (in the consumer's own language) and will explain exactly what the consumer will receive with their purchase (rate structure clearly explained).
-- Viscom offers real Spanish language customer service.
Viscom consumers will have full access to a live customer service representative, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the customer's own language.
-- Viscom offers a 100% product guarantee.
If the product does not work to the customer's satisfaction, Viscom will replace the product or provide a refund.
-- All Viscom products offer quality minutes.
Viscom offers a typical grace period of 25 seconds on each call to ensure customers are not charged if their call is answered by an answering machine or if they call a wrong number.
Source Marketwatch
Clearwire in their move to push their huge investment in WiMAX technology forward has signed 3 one year leases for the 39GHz spectrum from IDT Spectrum. Beta tests are already underway in Portland Oregon with a full roll out in that city, as well as 3 other cities (Las Vegas, Grand Rapids, and Atlanta), expected to be complete by sometime in early 2009. Competitor Xohm is expected to do similar launches this year in cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington D.C. so the race is on!
IDT Spectrum had held the licence for 39GHz for sometime and up until recently these spectrum's were not seen to have much value but with this recent WiMAX push it is likely that the spectrum's will now start delivering some value to their owners.
Could this have been the big deal with a telco that Howard Jonas referred to in his conference call addressing the shareholders?
Full Article: Clearwire’s WiMAX Tests: Acquisition of IDT’s Spectrum
In what looks like a very cool move Virgin Mobile and the Philadelphia Soul of the Arena Football League, announced that they will be holding a free concert in the Philadelphia area to celebrate the recent win by the Soul in ArenaBowl XXII. So far they have only announced that Bon Jovi will be performing but are said to have others as well.The Soul are owned by Rocker Jon Bon Jovi and a consortium of others so it only makes sense that Bon Jovi would headline the event. Full details of who, what, when and where are supposed to be announced this week.
This will be the first of special promotions that Virgin Mobile and the Philadelphia Soul will be doing together and is expected to continue through the next 2009 season with Virgin Mobile subscribers getting priority access to events like this and other Soul activities and games.
I am not completely sure yet but it may be that the only way to get into this free concert is through being a Virgin Mobile customer or at least getting someone who is a Virgin Mobile customer to get you the tickets.
A very cool tie in promotion... koodos to Virgin for this unique approach to youth marketing!
With all of the recent uproar from local officials about the deceptive practices in the phone card industry, it looked like the issue was finally going to reach the federal level, with scheduled hearings to be conducted by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Senator Bill Nelson's (D-FL) proposed bill S. 2998. However, it looks like that hearing has been postponed with no new date given leaving us to wonder if the calling card persecution movement is truly dying down?
It was commonly known that IDT had been the lead lobbyist for reforms in the business, utilizing heavy political contributions and insider CEO Jim Courter's connections to help push these initiatives along. However, with Jim Courter's recently being forced to step down from John McCain's fund raising committee due to the scandal behind a shady IDT and Telco Haiti deal, the movement may have lost it's conductor.
It's my personal opinion that the worst of the witch hunt against the phone card industry for the last few months may be behind us. It will never completely go away, but I think the process has run it's course, with lot's of positive changes in the industry like a higher percentage of cleaner cards, clearer advertising and most of all more legitamate overall business practices.
