Lycamobile, the UK-based international mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), is to launch its service in Tunisia in this quarter
Tunisia will be the 20th country in Lycamobile’s international network, and the first in Africa. Lycamobile Tunisia will be a partnership between Lycamobile UK and Asel Telecom, the company’s local partner in Tunisia.
With the service, Tunisians are expected to benefit from Lycamobile’s low-cost rates for international and domestic calls, as well as mobile data services. The company’s offerings will be of particular interest to Tunisians looking to call friends and family abroad. According to Tunisian government statistics, the size of the country’s diaspora around the world was estimated at more than 1.2mn people in 2012, including over 660,000 Tunisians resident in France, 189,000 in Italy and 86,000 in Germany.
Subaskaran Allirajah, chairman of Lycamobile, said, “Tunisia is one of the best-developed countries in Africa from a telecoms perspective, and it has a large diaspora concentrated in Europe. Those factors make it a natural market for us to open as we continue our international expansion, following on from our launches in Romania and Hong Kong earlier in 2015.”
After significant investment in recent decades, the North African country has one of the most well-developed telecoms infrastructures in the region. As a result Tunisia has some of the highest take-up rates of any country in Africa, with a mobile penetration rate of 132 per cent and an Internet penetration rate of 49 per cent, in July 2014, according to telecommunications research website budde.com.au.
