Comfone Signs Roaming Deal With India's Bharti Telecom

CANNES, France -(Dow Jones)- International roaming hub operator Comfone, which is 25%-owned by Swisscom AG (SCM), Thursday said it has agreed a deal with India's Bharti Telecom that will enable roaming across India's 23 regions.

Comfone's international hub connects mobile operators to roaming services, which allow them to use the networks of other wireless operators, avoiding the need to sign separate agreements in each country. Instead, Comfone signs a single roaming agreement with multiple operators.

Bharti Telecom is an Indian mobile telecoms operator part-owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (T48.SG) and Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. (5432454.BY).

The agreement with Bharti - which has around 10 million customers - is the largest Comfone has signed. The company expects many more operators to sign up to the hub now a company as large as Bharti has joined.

The deal was signed at the 3GSM conference Thursday.

Denis Gheysen, executive vice president marketing and sales, told Dow Jones Newswires at the sidelines of the conference the deal will be worth millions of dollars in revenue to Comfone over the next three to four years, once traffic builds in the hub. He expects revenue growth to climb slowly as more operators join.

Comfone takes a slice of the revenue generated as more people use roaming services in areas connected to the hub.

"This deal means operators can generate roaming revenue across India's 23 regions without needing to invest the time and revenue required to sign bilateral agreements in every region," Gheysen said.

He said 12 operators are signed up to the hub globally, but he expects between 50 and 60 operators to have joined by the end of the year.

Until now, Comfone's customers have tended to be small operators without the capacity to invest in forming bilateral roaming agreements in regions across the world. But with Bharti signed up, Gheysen expects larger operators to sign up to reduce costs and make sure they have exposure to roaming revenue when their customers travel.

"It's a paradigm shift for roaming," Gheysen said. Even large industry heavyweight operators will join the hub to avoid having to invest in individual deals in smaller nations where roaming revenues will be small, he said.

He added that larger operators can maintain established agreements in key territories, while signing up to Comfone's hub to gain roaming revenue in smaller nations.

"It's a headache for operators - large and small - to do this on a bilateral basis," he said.

-By Nic Fildes, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-20-78429264; nicolas.fildes@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires "

Posted to the site on 17th February 2005