Call US or Canada at Rs 1 per min

HYDERABAD: Pioneer Online has tied up with Canadian telecom service provider Talafone Communications to offer its wide range of VOIP-based services in both retail and corporate segments within India.

"With our service, it will be possible to make a call to US or Canada at a mere Rs 1 per minute and it does not mean that we are compromising on quality as our telecom infrastructure is regarded as one of the best in the world and we have partnerships in 23 countries worldwide," said, Jihad Mohammad, President & CEO at Talafone.

The companies signed the agreement at the backdrop of Gitex 2003 at Hyderabad. Both the companies have formed a Joint Venture company ‘Pioneer Talafone’ and the joint venture will be investing $ 1 million as seed capital. "We are going to ramp up our operations and by the end of this year we will be investing more than $ 10 million to firmly entrench ourselves within this region and tap the market," he explained.

The company is going to set up international calling centers at 100 different locations within India and to start with it has decided to have 10 such centers within Hyderabad itself. "We have identified 10 locations within Hyderabad city for having our international calling centers. These centers are going to be completely different from net cafes and they will provide better environment and infrastructure for our customers," he added.

The 50:50 joint venture Pioneer Talafone is aiming to achieve $180 million by the end of 2006 by offering its VIOP services in both retail and corporate segment. "More than 80 % of our revenue will be coming from the pre-paid cards which we are going to launch by the end of this week in Hyderabad. The reason why we are offering a cheaper option is that we are using our own telecom infrastructure for all these calls, so the calls will be terminating at our infrastructure only saving a lot of money for us as well as for the end-user," Jihad added.