People Telecom chases consumer market

People Telecom is expanding the range of mobile voice and broadband plans it offers to consumers via a new agreement with Vodafone Australia.

It is the second agreement of its kind in two weeks for the telco, and is another step towards completing its strategy to become a multi-network mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

Earlier this month, People signed a two-year agreement with M2 Telecommunications for the wholesale supply of Optus 3G and GSM mobile services.

“We need to expand our reach and ensure we are a very flexible service provider for all our customer segments,” People Telecom CEO, John Stanton, told iTnews.

“If we’re able to offer services from multiple networks all profitably, it expands the overall addressable market for us.”

Stanton said the Vodafone agreement gives People ‘very competitive’ consumer plans that it can cross-sell to existing customers.

“In the past, we’ve not always had highly competitive consumer-oriented plans to sell into our ADSL consumer base,” explained Stanton.

“Most of our mobile offerings tended to focus squarely on SME and business customers.”

The agreement is also expected to benefit Vodafone ‘with an important, new growth engine for greater indirect acquisition of small-to-medium enterprise (SME) customers’, the company said in a statement.

It is unclear whether People Telecom will also pursue an agreement with Telstra as part of its MVNO strategy.

The telco does have existing wholesale agreements with Telstra covering fixed wire, broadband and data services, including ADSL2+.