Taiwan: Carrefour Telecom

Launched:   November 2008
Network:      Chunghwa Telecom
Website:      http://www.carrefourtelecom.com.tw

Background

Taiwan is a developed, industrialized and affluent Asian island nation with 23 million people, making it a very attractive telecom market. But this rich opportunity came with significant challenges.

The competitive environment is exceptionally fierce and Taiwanese customers are very demanding. In addition, more than 90% of them choose a contract subscription, making the ‘try it and see’ prepaid approach that we used in other markets unworkable here.

To make matters worse, strict Taiwanese governmental regulations on subscriber ID checks seemed to make the ‘pick up and pay’ concept impossible. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the technical issue of running an operation in a country 10,000km away.

Launch

Carrefour Telecom launched successfully on November 1, 2008, to tremendous media fanfare and immediate market attention. The Taiwan operation is Effortel’s first post-paid implementation and initial activation results indicate very strong growth.

Moreover, we overcame the regulatory issues to launch a prepaid option, reaching out to consumers with our proven strategy – simple, transparent, great-value offers. And with our ‘Pick & Pay’ Starter Packs, we made prepaid more visible and educated the market.

Like all our MVNOs, our Taiwanese operation runs on Effortel’s technology platform in Brussels. Despite the distance – and the language barrier – the connection to the Chunghwa Telecom network in Taiwan went without a hitch and continues to operate flawlessly.

Today

Carrefour Telecom was the first operator to take prepaid seriously in Taiwan’s predominantly post-paid market. As well as equalizing the two tariffs, we enriched and differentiated our products with retail-related features. A major innovation enables customers to trade loyalty points for airtime – a first in Taiwan.

Further retail integration is planned. Loyalty points will be awarded to post-paid customers for paying the monthly bill. This completes the loyalty circle: prepaid customers get airtime for their loyalty points, post-paid get points when they pay for airtime used.

 

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