Mobile News

Iceland, which, due to its low population, already has a highly penetrated mobile market (77% at end-2000), is about to experience a huge influx of new operators. Islandissimi launched in March 2001 and another five to six licences are being awarded. Both operators–TAL and Iceland Telecom–have prepaid offerings. However, prepaid is still small, just 22% of the total subscriber base use prepaid. The introduction of new services may boost the value of prepaid in the near future.

TAL, which has a relatively small-prepaid base of 20,000 users, announced the launch of one of the world’s first prepaid GPRS services in May 2001. Using Kabira Technologies ObjectSwitch software platform, the service will support new services such as prepaid SMS. Oskar Hauksson, IT director for TAL says “this platform allows us to rapidly build and bill for the most innovative GPRS service and provide our customers with the most compelling services faster than our competitors.”