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NEW from Tarifica - Latest Trends in Prepaid

06 February 2006

London, Monday 6th February 2006: Tarifica, the international telecoms pricing consultancy, has today launched a new tariff benchmarking service covering prepaid mobile services for 75 operators across Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and South America.

The Prepaid Benchmark Service covers prices for data and voice services, messaging services including SMS and MMS as well as information on prepaid denominations with company profiles. Prepaid service users for the operators covered in Tarifica’s latest report constitutes the majority of mobile subscribers with some operators having in excess of 90 per cent of users on prepaid packages.

Many of the operators covered in the report are not market leaders in their respective markets but have without doubt contributed to shaping the current markets as well as increasing subscriber numbers by sheer competitive presence. As competition increases across the regions, operators are turning to trendy and exciting marketing techniques to attract the maximum number of potential subscribers. Non-dominant operators are adopting effective strategies without spending mass amounts of money.  Different pricing methods have been introduced in the regions with some operators, such as MTN in Nigeria, offering per second and per minute prepaid plan options. Bangladeshi operator Aktel offers mobile-to-mobile only plans as well as mobile-to-mobile and to fixed phone plans. As an incentive for its subscribers Telenor Pakistan offers unlimited validity top up credit. Similar to pricing models used in Europe, operators are also offering flat rate calling options such as DiGi in Malaysia as well as attractive off-peak and weekend packages as offered by Moroccan operator Meditel. Furthermore, new entrants and smaller operators can implement new services more efficiently than larger operators. This can be achieved by reducing the amount of time spent on trials as incumbent operators in the region and their European counterparts have conducted trial and error stages for certain technologies earlier.

An extract from the prepaid mobile benchmark report: prices are per message sent and are exclusive of tax.

The Tarifica Prepaid Benchmark Service includes operators in Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine and Zambia.

Tarifica’s Prepaid Benchmark Service is available at a special launch publication rate of GBP 5,995 for four quarterly updates from Tarifica, which includes prepaid pricing data for over 265 operators worldwide plus benchmarking analysis for 75 operators.

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Located in London, Tarifica is a leading brand of Access Intelligence LLC, headquartered in Rockville, MD, USA. Established in 1976, Tarifica was the first consultancy to track telecommunications tariffs, and offers a unique repertoire of tariff related products covering fixed and mobile services globally.

Access Intelligence (www.accessintel.com) is a B-2-B media and information company headquartered in Rockville, MD, serving the telecommunications, chemical, defence, satellite, aviation, cable, media and public relations markets. The Telecommunications Advisory Group includes: TelecomWeb, the telecom industry destination for comprehensive global business intelligence, which recently launched a daily news service; market intelligence provider InfoTech; tariff consultancy Tarifica; subscription news services such as Inside Digital TV and Wireless Business Forecast; and the Web-based product database TelecomTactics.

For further information or to subscribe please contact: consult@tarifica.com or +44 207 692 5292.

Contacts:

Ben Rawes, Sales Director - 0044 207 6925279 - brawes@tarifica.com

Margrit Sessions, Group Publisher - 0044 207 6925292 - msessions@tarifica.com