OXFORD, United Kingdom—In what appears to be almost an unseemly rush to protect their parochial businesses, five Asian operators—CSL of Hong Kong, Maxis of Malaysia, MobileOne (M1) of Singapore, Smart of the Philippines and Telstra of Australia—have formed the Asia Mobility Initiative (AMI), which will see nonexclusive agreements signed to encourage collaboration in the areas of mobile data and international roaming services.
While the three European-based operators, Telefónica Móviles of Spain, T-Mobile of Germany and Italy’s Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), have now gone public with their similar alliance, wireless industry analysts are viewing these moves as yet another step along the road to operator consolidation. Jeremy Green, an analyst with U.K.-based Ovum, said the emergence of pan-national super-operators, of which Vodafone is far and away the best example, enabled these players to consolidate their purchasing power, both to get good deals and to shape what is produced.
“Those operators who are outside the biggest groups risk being left behind on roaming, on international services, and on device specification and purchasing. Hence the current round of alliance announcements,” he said.
Neil Montefiore, chief executive officer (CEO) of M1, said: “The benefits of AMI are essentially in terms of adding value to the services we provide our customers. By sharing and cooperating with our AMI partners in content, services and other initiatives, we effectively broaden M1’s reach beyond the shores of Singapore.”
While these wide-ranging alliances look fine from a marketing perspective and perhaps provide comfort to the smaller partners, turning them into a workable reality is fraught with pitfalls. At the heart of these alliances will be the harmonization of billing systems, which can take years to implement and strain even the most well-intentioned business objectives.
For more details on the Asian alliance, see Asian operators collaborate on data services.
