Intelligent tilt at phones

Former technolgy company Natural Intelligence is about to emerge from its cocoon as a telco.

The West Perth-based listed firm has changed its name to CommodiTel following its acquisition of the assets of Revolution Telecom Limited in last year.

CommodiTel is chasing a significant portion of the pre-paid mobile phone market through a wholesale, network capacity deal with Vodaphone that will allow it to resell Vodaphone airtime at discounted rates.

Revolution has also secured an agreement with Vodaphone to operate as a Value Added Reseller (VAR) for the Vodaphone Target program in Australia that is designed to create reselling opportunities with corporate customers.

CommodiTel will offer branded or rebranded services in the prepaid space including content services and facilities such as parking metre payment by mobile phone.

The company also plans to offer what it terms a Mobile Virtual Network Enabling service to organisations that will let those organisations use their own brand on prepaid mobile services and sell through their own outlets.

Drawing on analogies from other industry sectors, CommodiTel director David Sweet described the prepaid concept as a “clean skin” equivalent to mobile services.

Mr Sweet said one possible use for the Revolution business model might be by major retail outlets using pre-paid services as part of a customer rewards scheme.

He said the ‘fast moving customer goods’ market was of particular interest to the company.

Mr Sweet said the company would focus on selling voice and text services only.

He said he believed CommodiTel was the first Australian company to tackle the prepaid market using this particular business model, although the concept had proven successful in overseas markets.

Mr Sweet said the deal with Vodaphone had provided the opportunity for CommodiTel to explore this prepaid market segment.

“We don’t have the overheads or the costs associated with our business that others [competitors] have,” he said.

“This is the best offer for prepaid per minute for voice. We are talking sub-thirty cents per minute for voice.

“It is a considerable saving to the current prepaid offers in the market.”

Revolution launched its own branded service on July 12, which is targeted primarily at the young, tech-savvy mobile market, although Mr Sweet said the concept would have broad appeal.

He said CommodiTel was in discussion with organisations regarding the Revolution concept.

Revolution was initially planned to be launched in April, however, Mr Sweet said fine tuning the details took longer than expected.

Mr Sweet, who was in Perth last week for a shareholder meeting where his appointment and the company name change to CommodiTel was approved, also took the time to spruik the Revolution concept to brokers and media.

He was formerly a director and senior executive with Vodaphone Australia, but left the international telco giant to join CommodiTel.

Mr Sweet will be located in Sydney, while the company will remain headquartered in Perth.

Other directors of the company include David Paginin of law firm Steinepreis Paganin and David Riekie.