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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi , Aug.19

THE Mobile First Alliance — a consortium between BPL Mobile, Escotel, RPG Cellular and Spice Telecom — has been laid to rest with three of the four partners being acquired by larger operators.

The Alliance was formed in March 2003 by the comparatively smaller cellular service providers as a strategic move to jointly take on competition from larger operators.

While BPL has been acquired by Essar, the Nandas-promoted Escotel has been bought out by Idea Cellular and RPG Cellular has been taken over by the Sterling group. Only the Modi-promoted Spice Telecom remains as part of the original alliance. The four operators had joined hands to offer seamless roaming, SMS-based services and to negotiate better commercial terms from long-distance operators as a consortium.

The four operators had also roped in the Boston Consulting Group to chart out ways to synergise the operations of the Alliance partners, which had cellular services in different parts of the country. Idea Cellular and Essar-Hutchison had also indicated their willingness to join the alliance.

"The Alliance had become non-operational from the time Escotel was acquired. Most of the joint marketing initiatives had been stopped. BPL's acquisition has put the last nail into the Alliance," said an operator who was earlier part of the Mobile First Alliance.

The Alliance at one point of time had 3 million subscribers across 700 towns in the country. All that remains now of the Alliance is the Web site, which has not been updated since last one year.

One of the biggest show of strength was when the Alliance members broke away from an agreement with Bharti for routing long distance calls to ally with the Tatas-managed Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

It had also begun common helpdesk numbers across all the four operators and allowed subscribers of one operator replace their SIM card while roaming in any of the Alliance partner's network.

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