"It's going to be a busy year for us as far as the MVNO space is concerned, it's going to be exciting. We will be launching two MVNOs in the second half of this year," DiGi chief executive officer Henrik Clausen said during an interview with Business Times recently. Last year, DiGi announced an MVNO tie-up with Baraka Telecoms. However, the deal was off before the official launch of the service. Baraka, however, had tied up with Maxis Bhd to become a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE). An MVNO is a company that offers mobile services like a normal mobile operator, without owning a radio spectrum or licence to the airwaves. It is able to offer the services by riding on existing mobile operators' network and infrastructure. An MVNE is a company that offers services such as billings to MVNOs. Currently, there are more than four MVNOs in the country. They include XOX, Merchantrade, Tune Talk and Redtone which are now riding on Celcom's network. The business model works where the MVNO has strength in a particular segment where the mobile operator is not strong in it. For example, Merchantrade has a strong customer base among foreign workers particularly South Asians, while XOX's services are mainly targeted at urban Chinese. Although Clausen declined to comment on segments these MVNOs be targeting at, analysts believe DiGi may be looking at MVNOs that have strength in suburban areas as well as the non-Chinese market. Meanwhile, Happy, DiGi's in-house MVNO brand, has started to show results. When Happy was launched in December 2007, its main idea was to use it as an "experiment" to gauge how an MVNO business model can work with DiGi. Happy was also used to tap into the East Coast markets, where the DiGi prepaid brand was not strong. "Due to some reasons, the DiGi prepaid brand wasn't popular in East Coast states like Kelantan and Trengganu. So, we decided to use Happy to penetrate the market. It is now showing results. "In fact, we are hoping to double Happy's market share in this segment over the next 12 months," said Clausen.
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