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!

[source]