Australia - Telecoms- International prepaid calling card market

Synopsis

Driven by the rapid global growth of mobile, especially in developing countries, and the capped prices in developed mobile markets, there is now a trend away from fixed line-based international calling to wireless-based calls. A large segment of this market is made up of the many ethnic groups – they are the largest users of the prepaid fixed calling cards. Over the next five years it is expected that around 50% of this market will move from fixed prepaid calling cards to wireless cards. This move will see a further increase in the size of the overall market, which could possibly double over a three to five-year period.

The pioneer in this wireless market is Lebara, which launched its services in 2010. It was followed by the leader in the calling card market, gotalk, and those two companies are set to dominate this market, with Tele-Pacific as the third player. BuddeComm predicts that, similar to developments that took place in the last decade in the fixed international call market, in the mobile international call market with these players who will replace the current mobile operators as the leaders in this prep-paid calling market.

Companies covered in this report include:

Lebara; Lyca; Lycamobile; gotalk; Telecorp; Tel-Pacific; World telecom