You won’t read stories like this every day. With every telecom operator fighting hard over bits and pieces of a booming market, there are hundreds of companies who don’t have their own radio spectrum frequency allocation but are still hoping to get a piece of the action by operating as an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). Some are commercially successful (e.g. Virgin Mobile UK), others not so much. But there’s one I’m definitely rooting for big time.

ElloMobile, a Belgian MVNO operating on the BASE network, sells pretty standard mobile plans, with prepaid cards, subscriptions and special packages for MMS and GPRS data plans. Prices are comparable to the 3 largest operators in Belgium, and sometimes even lower because the company conducts its business entirely over the web.

But here’s the juicy part: ElloMobile donates all its profits to charity. All of it. When the company launched in June 2006, it communicated 100% transparently, publishing a transcript of its business model and statutes. Anyone can publicly consult ElloMobile’s balance sheets at any given time (see below or download the PDF), and they’re not afraid to let you in on forecasts. If the company succeeds in convincing 100 000 Belgians to use their services by 2009, they would book 8,1 million euro in net profits.

ElloMobile users even get to choose which charity they would like to support: they can help save the rainforests, help street children in South America or donate to provide Palestinian refugees a proper education (you can find a complete list of projects here). Each of the projects is screened in advance by an independent jury of experts from the King Baudouin Foundation.

ElloMobile was brought to life by 3 founding partners of LUON, one of Belgium’s leading interactive marketing agencies: Serge Van de Zande, Onno Hesselink and Luc Robyns.

Tags: ellomobile, ello+mobile, mobile, mvno, gsm, luc+robyns, onno+hesselink, serge+van+de+zande, LUON, blognation, blognation+belgium, belgium

With Apple announcing today that the iPhone will be distributed in France with Orange as its exlusive carrier, it’s not surprising to see many people reinforced in their belief that Mobistar will become ‘the chosen one’ in Belgium. Mobistar of course being a part of the Orange Group.

In a Mint interview earlier this week, Mobistar spokeswoman Patti Verdoodt denied any agreements have been settled. While there are in fact iPhone devices circulating in the Mobistar buildings, Patti claims these have actually been purchased for their staff to play around with. Furthermore, if a deal would be made, it’s most likely this decision will be taken in Paris rather than Brussels.

By the way, who’s to say Apple won’t select Proximus instead? Besides, Apple seems to go for the leading operator in each country, and the company has already confirmed that all EU countries will be handled case per case. BASE seems out of the picture though …

While the iPhone has already been successfully unlocked and enabled with a Belgian operator several times, I’m still not entirely sure how they’re going to go about it. You’d have to know Belgian legislation to understand my reasoning, but in short: in Belgium, it’s against the law to jointly and exclusively sell two products/services at once. The iPhone won’t be officially for sale without an exclusive contract with a carrier, so that would make any purchase straight-up illegal. As would the SIMLock by the way.

Meanwhile, Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad is happily giving away iPhones on a daily basis with an additional ‘training’ by computer magazine Clickx, after which ‘you’ll be able to call with the device’. Why not just come out and say you’re giving away an iPhone with free hacking?

So, how about you? Do you think there will be an iPhone in Belgium before the end of the year? Which operator are you rooting for? Let me know in comments.

Tunz has just released PayPerTunz, a small JAVA application which enables you to make secure micro-payments with your mobile phone. The application is labeled ‘beta’ but is readily available for all registered Tunz members.

Before the release of PayPerTunz, users were only able to make small payments by simply sending an SMS to a cellphone number, without preregistration requirements. For security reasons, you had to enter a unique pin code to confirm the transfer. The money was then credited from a virtual account, which users can feed by bank transfer, credit card or SMS.

Tunz also introduced a nice feature for bloggers: TunzMe, a “Blog pay button” which people can embed on their blogs to let visitors make micro-payments, PayPal-style. Tunz keeps 10 eurocent commission fee per transaction.

PayPerTunz is supposed to allow users who have a JAVA supporting mobile phone to make small payments without having to send an SMS. (Update: the company checked in to let me know that you can actually send SMS through the applet. Future versions will support GPRS and Bluetooth). Users can also check their balance for the last 3 months. I tried installing the application earlier tonight, but it turned out to be a disappointment. I haven’t managed to get it to work on my phone (an HTC Vox) and have an e-mail in with the company to see if this is a temporary issue because of the beta status, a bug, or just incompatibility with my smartphone.

Tunz was launched by founders Grégoire de Streel & Jean Zurstrassen (former co-founders of both Skynet and Keytrade Bank) in May 2007. The company’s starting capital amounted to 1,5 million euro, half of which came from external investors (Brice le Blévennec, E-Merge and Compagnie Centrale 1909, an investment vehicle of Groupe Josi and COPEBA)

Tunz is not the only Belgian player on this field, they compete with Banksys‘ M-Banxafe service.

Of course, if Google is actually developing a mobile payments service as this patent suggests, both companies may be facing some serious competition soon.

(Via BelgiqueMobile - in French)

De Lijn, a Belgian public transportation company, is experimenting with bus/tram fare payments by SMS in Antwerp and Ghent.

The company wants to improve its customer service and avoid delays by allowing people to pay by sending a text message instead of having to run to the nearest newspaper store to buy a ticket, or go through their pockets to find the exact amount of small change. Don’t start partying yet: only (Belgacom) Proximus customers are able to use the service at this point.

De Lijn says it’s still ‘negotiating’ with BASE and Mobistar, Proximus’ main rivals in the Belgian telecom operator industry. Which makes me wonder why they decided to kick off the project prior to finding a solution in the first place.

De Lijn wants to roll out the service for the entire Flanders network if the experiments go well, and expects to sell half a million SMS tickets a year.

(Via Het Nieuwsblad Online)

De Tijd is reporting (link in Dutch) on a forecast by research agency Strategy Analytics claiming that the number of mobile connections in Belgium will grow to 10 million in 2008. For comparison: Belgium has a population of just over ten-and-a-half million people.

Belgium is expected to grow to 8,43 million mobile users by the end of this year (a 3,5 % increase) and 8,56 million in 2008. Evidently, these numbers don’t reflect the number of total connections because some people have multiple phones and SIM cards.

Strategy Analytics also claims that Western Europe will boast a total of 327 million mobile connections by the end of this year, an increase of 1,9 %, but that the growth for this region will slow down to a mere 0,2 % by the end of 2008.

More interesting tidbits about Belgium: when you break up the numbers, this year’s 8,43 million people counts 7,21 million private and 1,22 million professional users. They will spend a total of € 4,16 billion on phone calls, text messages, prepaid cards and subscriptions.

Mobiya seems to be on a roll lately. The Anglo-Belgian company has just announced a new partnership with Rapid Mobile, a London based developer of mobile phone monetization and advertising solutions on their company blog.

After signing deals with second largest Belgian newspaper Metro (see coverage here) and Reed Business Information, the company seems well on its way to convince media concerns and mobile service providers of the advantages their application suites have to offer.

Martin Davis, CEO of Mobiya:

“As of today, users of the Mobiya service are not only able to post a classified ad using their mobile, but are also able to view the listing directly onto their mobile.”

Dr Richard M Marshall, CEO of Rapid Mobile adds:

“The Ad360 platform serves mobile advertisements while the user is interacting with the classified listings, a great way to monetize the classified content.”

Mobiya is exploring the fields of ‘Next Generation Classified Advertising’, by which they basically mean they’re actively looking for innovative ways of bringing classifieds from the offline and online world to the mobile phone. The Mobiya Application Suite, launched in October 2006, offers any publisher the opportunity to integrate classifieds in their magazines, newspapers and/or websites, handle the content billing, formatting, distribution, etc.

Mobiya’s go-to-market strategy is twofold: indirectly (mobile enablement of publishers’ classified content and activation of user generated content initiatives) and directly (by working with partners on large-scale projects to provide full outsourcing of existing or new classified business).

Rapid Mobile is a leading developer of intelligent mobile phone monetization and advertising solutions. In February 2007, Rapid Mobile launched its Ad360 intelligent mobile advertising platform. The company sells turnkey mobile monetization solutions to the following market segments: publishers, brand owners and their advertising agencies, internet retailers and auction sites, social networking websites, mobile games developers, and mobile network operators.

Mobiya recently received a capital injection of € 250 000 from Big Bang Ventures and Solid Ventures (who seem to be making investments together on a regular basis). Rapid Mobile is backed by Pentech Ventures, a specialist investment fund based in Glasgow.