Lebara Mobile targets UK migrant market with MVNO

I had a note in from Vodafone UK today to tell me about their new partnership with Lebara Mobile.

Lebara is a mobile MVNO aimed at permanently based UK immigrants and migrant workers in the UK who want to use their mobile to (primarily) call overseas. Right now, if you grab a Vodafone pay as you go sim from the local store, you’ll be knocked for a ton of cash to call abroad — but not if you get yourself a Lebara sim.

Unlike other MVNO announcements recently (I’m looking at you, Extreme Mobile), I think Lebara’s concept is smart — there is, I reckon, substantial demand from certain segments of the population for this kind of service.

Here are the details of the announcement:

Vodafone UK today announces a new MVNO partnership with Lebara Mobile as part of its wholesale strategy. Lebara Mobile is an MVNO that will provide a competitive way for permanently based immigrants in the UK, and migrant visitors and workers to the UK, to use their mobiles to call overseas.

This SIM-only pre-pay offer will be provided to customers under the Lebara brand, available through a mixture of outlets central to the migrant community. Customers will be supported by own language customer service before and after the purchase.

Tim Stone, director of new business development and wholesale at Vodafone UK, said: ‘We are delighted that Lebara Mobile is launching today. In March we set out the Vodafone UK strategy to drive revenue growth and, as part of this, our ambitions to grow our wholesale market share. We are very pleased to be working with Lebara Mobile which has proven experience of delivering successful services to the migrant market – a very sizeable market in the UK worth in the region of £500million. We are pleased to be the partner of choice for Lebara Mobile and look forward to reaching this exciting new market in the UK.”

‘We are delighted to be working with Vodafone as our key strategic partner for the UK launch of Lebara Mobile. The Vodafone network allows us to offer our customers over 99% call coverage in the UK and allows our customers to make high quality international and national mobile phones calls.” Robert Gaskin, Lebara Mobile UK country manager.

The announcement builds on the agreements made this summer with Asda to deliver a new MVNO ‘Asda mobile’, with TomTom to deliver real-time traffic information to drivers, and more recently with The Carphone Warehouse as MVNO partner for ‘TalkMobile’. All of these partnerships, reflect Vodafone UK’s position as the wholesale strategic partner of choice.