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A Singapore company has come up with a smart solution to help the millions of guest workers in Asia to stay in touch.

Startup Fixed & Mobile has built a billing and rating platform that allows migrants in places like Malaysia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia to send airtime back to their loved ones.

The one-year-old firm has just made its first major sale to Telekom Malaysia, which will deploy it in its operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Eric Barbier, managing director of Fixed & Mobile, says the product gives cellcos the chance to address a segment worth as much as 15% of the population. He noted that mobile operators have done a good job in addressing business and consumers, but the migrant segment of their population "had not been properly taken care of."

Until now the only products serving this huge group have been calling cards, says Barbier. He says similar solutions from the Philippines mobile operators, for example, involved sending money rather than airtime.

"We don''t believe that''s a viable business," he says, because it runs into banking regulatory issue and "offers a thin margin, whereas the telecom margin is fairly fat."

Barbier came up with the idea after seeing the popularity of payphones in train stations in Europe, which were used almost solely by African and east European guest workers.

Fixed & Mobile''s next goal is to increase its geographical expansion, he says. The primary focus is the Middle East and Asia, although the company is also making a push in South Africa.

"We''ve discovered south-south migration is very high. You see it in South Africa and you see it in eastern Europe, where the Polish go to the UK and the Hungarians go to Poland."

As well as helping migrants send minutes directly back home, F&M''s platform also supports a product that lets family back home call a local number, which is then forwarded to the user''s phone.

The host carriers like it, Barbier says, because it creates a subscription relationship with users who are usually prepaid, and thus helps reduce churn.

It also helps balance the minutes between a poor country and a much wealthier one.


Source: telecomasia