Four cellular operators — BPL Mobile, Escotel, RPG Cellular and Spice Telecom — have joined hands to create the MobileFirst alliance with an objective to leveraging synergies and expertise among the players. The alliance will cut across all the cellular circles where the four players have a presence.BPL Mobile’s president & CEO F.B. Cardoso said the alliance will offer special tariffs for national and international calls in addition to value-added services. “Each one of these players has the background of launching services such as SMS and MMS,” he added.The alliance will be across the cellular circles of all these players; among these are Mumbai, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana. Escotel’s CEO Rajan Swaroop said there were a host of advantages for the consumer such as affordable tariff, enhancing roaming reach and operational synergies. He pointed out that it was too early to comment on issues like revenue sharing. Emphasising that the alliance was not a precursor to a merger between the players, RPG Cellular’s managing director Dilip Mehta said that it will now be possible to lend value to the customer and leverage on the marketing expertise that each of these players possessed. “There is no question of changing the identities or the brand names of the respective players” he added. Spice Telecom’s MD — Corporate Services Umang Das said the alliance will ensure that technology will now be inducted at a far more rapid pace.
