NEW YORK-TeleData World Services Inc., Atlanta, expects to begin next month providing its TWOS brand prepaid cellular phones and service to 10,000 convenience stores nationwide owned by Lantana Merchants Solutions Corp., Newport Beach, Calif.
The Lantana Solutions rollout, announced in late August, followed another just a week earlier in which TeleData launched its College Bookstore Program. The program calls for the sale and marketing of its prepaid phones and related services in 4,300 colleges and universities nationwide and 150,000 retail stores surrounding those campuses.
Lantana stores already provide vending machines for prepaid phone cards and automated teller machine script to pay for calls. In October, they also will offer TWOS prepaid cellular phones and, for cash, TWOS prepaid airtime cards.
The TWOS DebitFone, using proprietary technology, is manufactured for the company by Japan Radio Co. Ltd., whose U.S. operations are headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. DebitFone enables customers to buy prepaid airtime for their phones in increments of 30, 60 or 120 minutes using a credit card, bank account or airtime card.
Owners of TWOS phones also can dial a toll-free number to recharge airtime use remotely, “a feature unique to TeleData World Services phones,” the company said.
TeleData said it resells airtime it has purchased from major carriers, which it declined to identify. The cellular service TeleData offers is analog but the company is in the process of going to digital technology, said spokesman Larry Fortune of I.W. Miller Group Inc., Irvine, Calif.
Retail customers “can buy the DebitFone for $80-$90 right out of a vending machine, and it comes with a block of time loaded into it,” he said.
Following a merger in late January, Clarion Resources Communications Corp. assumed control of TeleData International Inc., a TeleData World Services subsidiary. Telenor of Norway established Clarion to conduct the majority of its business in the Americas.
Also in late January, TeleData World Services and Clarion formed PPJV, a joint venture to offer the TWOS proprietary prepaid cellular software and services worldwide. TeleData World Services has majority control of PPJV.
TeleData World Services and Clarion also formed Galaxy Wireless Communications L.L.C. as the holding company for two TWOS’ acquisitions: DebitFone International Inc., a prepaid telecom company, and WorldWide Cellular Inc., which TWOS described as “a national activation reseller.”
