Mobile Europe:
Andrew, you are managing director of the Morodo Group, the company that is marketing MO-Call, a low cost VoIP solution for international mobile calls. What is MO-Call about and how does it work?
Andrew Reid:
Put simply, MO-Call is a service designed to offer owners of mobile or internet-connected devices, low-cost international calls. We do this by offering a very light software application for download, which then routes your calls through our platform. There is no call for separate SIMs, address books, dialing prefixes or other numbers to call.
Users only have to have sufficient credit on their MO-Call account to be able to place a call, either while roaming, or outbound from their usual country of residence. For our MO-Call Home service, users place a call as normal. The application routes a call to our platform, which then makes an outbound call. At the destination number, the call is terminated onto the network required. CLI is carried throughout the process, and the user is debited the cost of the call in real time from his prepaid Morodo account.
For our other main service, MO-Call World, call set-up is slightly different. A user, places a call, which prompts the application automatically to send an SMS to the Morodo platform. This SMS prompts the platform to authenticate and authorize the user, before it places a ringback call to the calling party. When the user answers this call, the second leg of the call is then routed to the destination. If you are roaming, you can set MO-Call to call you back at any number you want – a local landline for instance, which means you can avoid the inbound roaming cost.
The difference between the two is really that in deregulated markets, where we can provision access numbers, we can offer the MO-Call Home service. In other markets, or for use as a fallback where there may occasionally be an issue with an access number availability, MO-Call World offers a great user experience too.
Mobile Europe:
So using this architecture, what rates are you able to offer users?
Andrew Reid:
For a UK example we can offer rates from 1.5 pence per minute to call China. European countries at around 2 pence per minute, up to 8, 9 and 10p per minute to countries right at the top end. Obviously our ability to offer rates is determined by the termination fees we are charged at a wholesale level in different markets. Our headline rates may not be as low as some you see from the calling card providers, but our rates are flat rate, with no hidden extras.
Clearly, it’s an attractive proposition, as in the six months we have been marketing MO-Call we have signed up 52,000 users, and are signing up new users at the rate of two to three hundred a day.
Mobile Europe:
There are lots of mobile application developers out there, both in the voice area and in other areas. How can you achieve that visible market presence?
Andrew Reid:
I think one of our chief differences right away is that we are focused on the voice market. It’s still the cash cow in the industry so that makes it the right place to be. A lot of applications developers in the games market, or similar, find that their only channel to market is through the operator portal. Developers in the voice area, however, have tended to focus on the business voice market, which of course places them in direct competition with the mobile operators themselves.
We see ourselves much more as providing a potential partnership solution with mobile operators and other service providers. For mobile operators, there are markets they would like to grow in, but don’t want to spend the billions required either to acquire an in-country operator, or establish themselves in the market. Because we can offer a white label service, we offer them a way to build up a considerable brand presence in markets and territories where they are not yet active. Another area of huge potential growth is in areas where there are significant ex-patriot populations. There is research to show that the majority of calls made by Asian ex-pats living in the UK, for instance, go back to the sub-continent. MO-Call offers an Asian operator a route to a footprint in the UK, to address that market. Or a UK service provider can tap into that traffic to improve the user experience, and reduce costs, for the community within the UK. That model can be followed all over the world, such as in the Gulf and into other parts of Asia, and of course the USA.
Morodo offers MO-Call software for resale under four different license types, that have been developed to be as flexible as possible to meet the needs of a wide variety of resellers, affiliates, brand owners and operators. For example, for a potential Mexican reseller, we completely localised a new website and service, and you can look at www.mo-call.com.mx for the results. The localisation encompassed mobile software, sales content and service operation. In the last quarter of this year, we aim to complete similar projects for resellers in North America and Australia.
Mobile Europe:
Two of the issues with calling applications have been ease of use, and also the range of handsets that an application is compatible with. Does MO-Call address these issues?
Andrew Reid:
Absolutely. One of the areas we have been investing in is a series of short customer care guides that explain exactly how to find the application once you have downloaded it, and take you through the very simple path to operation.
We also recently announced that customers can now use MO-Call in any one of more than 1,100 different mobiles, from over 30 different mobile manufacturers. We develop in J2ME, RIM, Apple, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms. This is a huge range, which crucially includes the Java capability, far wider than most VoIP applications, which tend to be designed for a relatively small selection of smartphones. And even that number excludes users who can reach our application through their browsers, to our .mobi site or Internet web site, where they can use a web-triggered function to register for usage.
Mobile Europe:
Dealing with the number of mobile development environments out there is always a tax for developers. How do you offer your application in a standard way across so many platforms, and how do you retain and consistent and easy to use UI?
Andrew Reid:
We can achieve this because we are at heart a mobile software application developer – dedicated to the integration of software that adds value to the mobile experience. MO-Call is an application developed by the Morodo Technology Development Company based in Beijing, where all of our development takes place. The Morodo Technology Development Company is part of the Morodo Group, which is a privately funded corporate entity, founded in September 2006. Situating our development in Beijing means we can benefit from the tremendous universities of Beijing, specifically through our partnership with the Information Engineering School at Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. So we can maintain a high level of innovation at lower cost to many markets.
The management at Morodo have great experience in the telco world. I am the former CFO of Primus Europe, building a $13 million business in three years. Our technical director, James Barnes, was General Manager for Primus Mobiles, and worked with many software design companies in that capacity. Our team means we have a great experience of the mobile network operator and MVNO models, as well as of building businesses. We understand the needs and concerns of potential licensees and partners, whether they are from within or outside the carrier community.
Mobile Europe:
With operators facing a hit on their roaming revenues within Europe, do you think you are hitting a receptive target at the moment?
Andrew Reid:
I think the relevant point there is that although European operators are being forced, or have chosen, to cut their roaming costs within Europe, there is evidence that some have compensated for this by raising their costs for roaming in other world markets – so roaming costs are still an issue in much of the world.
There’s also evidence that mobile operators are beginning to embrace VoIP as a tool they can use, rather than merely regard it as a threat to existing revenues. They can offer soft clients and other means when their users are roaming, and to inbound roamers, to retain loyalty and ease the user experience. A tool like ours absolutely plays to that, as it comes with carrier-grade levels of customer care and support, and can be branded and offered to market with no change to a user’s existing call settings, address book, or any other functionality. It leverages the user experience the mobile user has already, rather than push him into separate applications, or even devices, such as with soft clients on laptops and handsets.
For the last 10 months Morodo has been working on something known as “Project RICO.” Just as MO-Call began with the simple idea of putting a calling card in a mobile phone, the MO-Call RICO project set out to bring VOIP to both your mobile and desktop. We are nearing the completion of a long development schedule and hope to deliver a unified communications solution under the MO-Call umbrella this calender year. Beginning with VOIP the added MO-Call features will evolve, offering Instant Messaging and Presence, free on-net calling, phone book management, conference calling, voice mail and media sharing.
Morodo has already attracted substantial interest from Mobile Network Operators with the MO-Call application. We hope that our Mobile VOIP application will not frighten the MNOs, but rather encourage them to work with us in offering their customer base competitive services. That’s what we would like to see!