In conjunction with this milestone, TuneTalk is offering FREE calls which we believed is free only within TuneTalk network as announced over twitter. TuneTalk is also running a contest that gives free trip to London for 2 for the highest top up user.

Check out our previous posts on TuneTalk here.

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Our coverage on the Baraka-DiGi fallout caught the attention of one very interesting reader – the CEO of Baraka Telecoms, Ishsal Ishak.

We wrote that the mutually terminated agreement with DiGi was a sign that the Islamic telco would not be making a debut in the local Market. But Ishsal claims otherwise, saying that Baraka is looking at a different approach and is “reconsidering the MVNO business in Malaysia” and the role that the company wants to play in the local telco industry.

In the comment Ishsal added that Baraka is currently in talks with “a number of parties at the moment” to partner with to launch its mobile services; but the CEO tells us that it is too soon to divulge any details.

Though Ishsal did put out a timeline on when Baraka will be able to give us more details, saying that it will be around three to four weeks, “at the earliest“.

Critically, we noted in our post that Baraka conducted two promotional programs that we have never heard of.

Ishsal rebuts this and says that the campaigns were targeted to the Baraka’s “direct audience“, hence the reason why some of us might’ve missed it. Ishsal added that the two programs has produced “unprecedented results” and he’s “extremely happy with the campaigns” and that the outcome of the campaigns to be announced soon.

He his comment by saying the Baraka remains “committed to our business ideas and IP in this unprecedented space of Islamic telecoms. God willing, we will be fulfilling the market’s curiosity with satisfactory and consumer benefiting programmes, in one form or another“.

Thanks for dropping by our blog Mr. Ishak. We;re always interested to see the development of new telco in Malaysia and we will be sure to keep our eyes peeled for the latest announcements from Baraka.

You can read his comment on our post here.

Bernama reports that Baraka Telecom, a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) under DiGi Telecommunication’s network has mutually ceased their MVNO roaming agreement. The reason behind the termination is due to Baraka Telecom’s reconsideration in the MVNO business.

This was quite a surprise to us as Baraka Telecom’s CEO, Al-Ishsal Ishak announced on February 2010 that they will be rolling out within 3 months time with various voice, data and mobile commerce services. Obviously things didn’t turn out as planned.

For those who didn’t know, Baraka Telecom is Malaysia’s 1st Islamic Mobile operator guided by Syariah Principles. It hardly made any waves in our local telco industry while other MVNOs such as Happy and TuneTalk gaining traction in the market.

A quick check on their site revealed very little info except for a 2 campaigns that we hardly heard of. Too bad we never get to see any products or services from them.

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Budget MVNO Tune Talk is looking to offer its subscribers more cost effective roaming services to Singapore as early as the third quarter of this year.

Once available, Tune Talk’s subscribers travelling to Singapore will be able to roam using their existing prepaid cards. Interestingly, the customers will be charged local Singapore call rates.

Tune Talk CEO, Jason Lo said under its current MVNO arrangement with Celcom, Tune Talk customers can roam in Singapore but it rides on whatever roaming arrangement Celcom has with Singapore operators.

Jason said in an announcement Thursday that Tune Talk is “trying to by-pass the current roaming platform and link up with a Singapore telco“. Jason added that Tune Talk is in talks “with a company” in Singapore at the moment and “hope to conclude the deal soon“.

According to Jason, the cheapest Singapore call rate currently is about S$0.08/min or about RM0.18/min.

At the same time, Tune Talk is also eyeing to offer a simillar roaming arrangment to Indonesia early next year and aims to enter into three other countries in the next 12 months.

Jason said Tune Talk plans to be in all the Asean countries in five years.

As it stands, Tune Talk has about 860,000 activations and hopes to hit one million activations next month.

Tune Talk offers the lowest prepaid flat call rate in the country at 16 sen per minute to any domestic operator.

For your information, a roaming call from Singapore with Tune Talk costs a whopping RM5/min! Picking up incoming calls will cost you RM2/min. SMS is RM2/sms. Whoa!

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It’s a small step forward in the right direction but it’s still a long way off from what an aspiring Australian MVNO has managed to come up with.

Take a look at Savvytel, an award winning MVNO that offer prepaid credits that never expire. They are the first telco (MVNO or not) to provide such value added service.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hM2J6sAioM]
Savvytel TV Commercial

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rQNWzoewAw&feature=user]
Everything you need to know about Savvytel

Prepaid credits that last a ridiculously short amount of time is just one of the low-blow tricks used by telcos to increase ARPU of prepaid customers.

With finite credit validity period, customers are forced to top-up to keep their lines active even when they still have unused credit in their SIMs. If it just happens you forget to top-up to keep your credit validity from expiring, your line will be canceled. If you have unused credit, then you lose all your money too.

Imagine there’s just RM1 left when your prepaid expires, your line canceled and your credit forfeited. That might not be a big amount but consider this, if one day 100 prepaid lines are forfeited that’s RM100 of free money to the telcos per day. Multiply that by 30 days in month and the telcos get RM3,000 of free money a month, or RM36,000 free money a year. That’s a lot of money anyway you look at it.

We feel that this is a conservative figure but it’s still reasonable to assume that the local telcos are making a handsome sum from expired prepaid credits. We know the big boys (Celcom, DiGi, Maxis and U Mobile) incur high overheads and might not be able to develop a business model that offers evergreen prepaid validity periods but they could at least make the expired credits recoverable or refundable. It’s only fair.

Though overheads shouldn’t hamper DiGi offshoot Happy and a host of Malaysian MVNOs like Tune Talk and XOXO who have yet to launch their services to consider a business model that is capable of offering prepaid credits that don’t expire.

For now, all we can do is wait and see.