Digital Island completes 3G MVNO pilot

Full service bundle and high speed data drives mobile growth

1 July 2010

Business telecommunications provider, Digital Island, has successfully completed a three month pilot of its 3G mobile product. Digital Island is now offering 3G business mobile services to the open market. This is the latest milestone in Telecom Wholesale’s first MVNO deal, inked with Digital Island in 2009.

“Digital Island has always specialised in products for businesses: initially voice, then data, now 3G mobile. Our customers trust us to select the best products for their business, bundled up with great pricing and fanatical service. Giving them access to the latest smart phones and New Zealand’s highest speed mobile data network is a central component of this,” General Manager Blair Stewart says.

“Digital Island has put real focus into being the experts in business smart phone devices. We are also adding cloud-based services to our product line up to make the integration piece easier, for example becoming a Google Apps reseller, which provides cloud-based access to shared documents, calendar, email, video and other applications.

“What most customers want is a seamless welding of their email, contacts and calendar and the ability to do small amounts of Internet browsing. However our more sophisticated customers run clients for specialist applications, for example, Sales Force or to access in-house systems on their company network. Depending on the IT infrastructure the customer already has in place, this can be a quick handset configuration exercise, or may require advice on the installation of back-end systems.

“Recent IDC research* shows mobile data as a key growth area in telecommunications. Alongside this has come the rise of cloud-based computing. This translates to business users moving to hosted solutions which they can access from anywhere via the mobile data network, and further explains the high demand for smart phones devices and high speed mobile data services.

“With the increased access to ADSL2+ and overall improvement of broadband speeds, customer expectation has been raised for the performance of mobile broadband services. The 3G mobile data services we provide via our MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) agreement with Telecom Wholesale use New Zealand’s fastest mobile data network. Telecom’s recent HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access) upgrade to its mobile network means we can achieve average download speeds of 4Mbps. Put another way, you can download a 3 minute song in just 10 seconds. Backed up by a high speed fibre network, HSPA+ is available to over 80% of the places where New Zealanders live and work.

“The range of devices that use 3G mobile data services is increasing daily, with many people sporting several different devices, each on separate mobile data plans what Digital Island sees as unpleasantly high costs. We have addressed this with cost effective data plans specifically designed for low or infrequent use devices, such as the soon to arrive Apple iPad.

“The service aspects to being a mobile provider are also crucial. As the first MVNO cab off the rank we agreed to a three month 3G pilot, with limits around the quantity of connections we would activate each month. The piloting process has been invaluable not just in terms of running systems and processes, but also in getting a better understanding of the complex mobile market.

“While Digital Island’s pilot achieved good results around all the operational processes such as provisioning, support and billing, we also identified some gaps in the existing market. As a result we upped the ante on providing on-site setup and training for mobile handset users. We’re local, our support service is local. We turn up at your business and make sure you are getting the most out of your mobile services, especially when it comes to smart phone integration.”

“As a recent arrival in the mobile space, it’s been interesting to discover the level of frustration many business users have with their existing mobile solutions. We have had a lot of feedback from our current fixed line customers about their poor mobile experience and, outside of our customers, it seems you don’t have to go very far to find dissatisfaction with the prevailing ‘take or leave it’ attitude of the big operators. Common issues are around customer service, misleading pricing, high data roaming charges, through to not being able to have landline and mobile services on the same invoice. We’ve worked hard to address all of these issues as we want our offer to consistently be the best option in the market for business customers.

“Sure Telecom had some initial problems with the roll-out of its new mobile network, but we believe the resulting focus has made it even an better network than the original promise. Telecom has a proven track record of network delivery unmatched in this country. That’s the reason we’ve chosen to do business with them for six years now,” Mr Stewart says.