Australia - Telecoms - International prepaid mobile market

Synopsis

Driven by the rapid global growth of mobile, especially in developing countries, and the capped prices in developed mobile markets, the traditional fixed line-based international calling is all but done. A large segment of the original market is made up of the many ethnic groups – they remain the largest users of the prepaid fixed calling cards. Other than that, we have seen travellers moving away from calling cards to prepaid mobile solutions. Over 80% of the traditional calling card market has moved from fixed prepaid calling cards to wireless solutions. The inclusion of other mobile services (SMS, data) is generating a further increase in the size of the overall market; however this market is now shared by many more players, including all of the major mobile operators.

The pioneer in this prepaid wireless ‘calling card’ market has been Lebara, which launched its services in 2010. It was followed by the leader in the fixed calling card market, gotalk (now Aggregato), and together those two companies still dominate the traditional segment of the market.

However, the mobile operators and other (smaller) prepaid SIM providers have since become the larger segment of the overall international mobile prepaid market.

BuddeComm predicts that, for the time being, similar to the developments that took place a decade ago in the international fixed call market when the incumbent lost the market to new, more agile competitors, specialised low-cost players will now be able to enter the mobile international call market and replace large parts of the business that is currently dominated by the mobile operators. This will end when the mobile operators start lowering their international roaming charges.

Companies covered in this report include:

Aggregato, Lebara; Lyca; Lycamobile; gotalk; Tel-Pacific; Australian Telecom, Access Telecoms, Krush Communications