Business

Saturday September 5, 2009

Tune Talk in talks on Singapore expansion


KUALA LUMPUR: Tune Talk Sdn Bhd is in talks with all Singapore’s three mobile operators as part of its plan to expand into the city-state and Indonesia next year.

Chief executive officer Jason Lo said the company was currently in talks with three mobile operators in Singapore – M1, SingTel and StarHub – for a potential collaboration in providing services in the republic.

Jason Lo ... ‘We expect to sign a memorandum of understanding with M1 after March next year’

“We expect to sign a memorandum of understanding with M1 after March next year,” he told a press conference after the prize presentation for the company’s Freedom2Talk campaign yesterday.

He declined to divulge further details as negotiations were on-going.

On its local operations, Lo said the mobile operator had signed up more than 20,000 subscribers since it launched its services on Aug 19, averaging between 1,000 and 2,000 new subscribers a day.

“Our target is to have 3,000 to 5,000 new activations a day,” he said, adding that the company was on track to achieve one million subscribers in the first year of operation.

Tune Talk plans to double the number of its dealers to 6,000 by end-October.

Lo said the company would expand its distribution channels through different platforms like AirAsia, Tune Hotel and Tune Money to widen its customer base.

The Freedom2Talk campaign ran for 10 weeks between May and July before Tune Talk was launched.

Nur Hamidi Baharuddin, who champions a fund raising project to build a hostel for rural students, emerged the campaign’s “Chief Talker” and walked away with RM50,000.

Tune Talk operates as a mobile virtual network operator that rides on Celcom (M) Bhd’s 2.5G network.

The company charges a flat rate of 22 sen per minute for calls to any operator in the country, while an SMS costs 5 sen each.

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