By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor
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Wednesday 26th September 2001 |
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Although the two companies have finally signed an interconnection agreement, Telecom mobile boss Mohan Jesudason says his company has had to work hard for nearly a year to bring it to fruition.
"We were finding it difficult to demonstrate just how much mobile customers wanted this service, so in May this year we went ahead and developed our own solution that allowed Telecom customers to text to Vodafone.
"In conjunction with this we then worked with third parties to find a way for Vodafone customers to respond via the Internet. It was a good interim solution and generated a fantastic response."
Mr Jesudason claims the success of the promotion demonstrated the enormous customer demand for such a service and encouraged Vodafone to come to the party.
Telecom is predicting the number of text messages being sent will soar in light of the agreement. The new service goes live Wednesday with a special promotion price of 15 cents for each message until the end of the year.
The agreement will initially only allow mobile to mobile traffic but Telecom is hoping to add message services from computer networks in the near future.
Telecom says the biggest user of text services is the youth market.
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