It will now be easier for islanders to use a
mobile if travelling in India, a popular backpacking destination,
as Sure mobile has signed up a number of new roaming agreements
there bringing its total number of partners to over 300.
In order for Sure mobile’s Pay monthly
customers to use their phones in another country, there needs to be
a roaming agreement with at least one network in the place that
they are visiting. Those bilateral agreements also allow customers
of foreign networks to roam onto Sure if they visit the Channel
Islands or Isle of Man.
The mobile operator has recently signed
agreements with new networks via iDEA Cellular networks in India.
iDEA Cellular runs numerous GSM 900/1800 networks throughout India.
Sure already has service through iDEA in three Indian regions and
will add Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra & Goa,
Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh East and Madhya
Pradesh.
In addition it has also signed roaming
agreements with Afghan Wireless in Afghanistan, Azerfon in
Azerbaijan, Teletalk in Bangladesh, Telma in Madagascar, UTL in
Uganda and MTN in Zambia. They are the operator’s first partners in
each of those locations.
Sure mobile now has 304 roaming partners, with
141 destinations covered.
To use BlackBerry, mobile internet, picture
messaging or any other GPRS-based services away from home, Sure
customers need access to a GPRS network for data roaming. The
operator has agreements with 160 GPRS networks, covering 73
destinations. Pay as you go customers can roam on 34 networks, with
30 destinations covered.
Mark Briers, Sure’s Marketing Director,
commented:
“Many of our customers travel a lot so it is a
key part of our strategy to make it increasingly easy for them to
use mobile and BlackBerry services abroad. We have a team dedicated
to that which has recently been further strengthened so that we can
continue to take strides forward in this area.”