Telefonica Joins Starmap Alliance?

[Effendi]

Easier PrePay Top-Ups When Roaming

The European operators alliance, Starmap has announced a new service whereby customers of one operator can use the PrePay top-up vouchers from another other alliance operator to top-up their account. Using this service, customers are able to buy vouchers and top-up their pre-pay account abroad.

Starmap partners pre-pay customers can buy a pre-pay voucher in the countries belonging to the Starmap Alliance and use it to recharge their own pre-pay account. The balance is then credited to the respective customer account in just a few minutes time. The offer is valid in 9 countries: Great Britain (O2), Ireland (O2), Germany (O2), Italy (Wind), Norway (Telenor), Denmark (Sonofon), Spain (Amena), Switzerland (Sunrise) and Hungary (Pannon).

The offer will first take effect for O2 Ireland in March 2006. The Starmap members One Austria and Eurotel in the Czech Republic will not yet offering this service.

As part of the agreement for Telefonica to purchase O2, it will be leaving its own operator alliance, Freemove which includes France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Deutsche Telekom.

[maccoy]

I think it would be the most logical thing...
In fact Orange bought Amena a few months ago and they are going to change the name "Amena" into "Orange Espa?a".
So Amena/Orange will join the Freemove Mobile Alliance and Telefonica will pass to the Starmap Mobile Alliance.

[Triband81]

Good to see that another provider group has decided to enable the use of top up cards from different countries. T-Mobile hasn't done this yet.

[ceyo]

This sounds great! Like Vodafone clients can use local Vodafone-vouchers to top up their account while being abroad.

By the way, it`s really weird that in Finland we still don?t have any operator that provides prepaid roaming.. :ranting2:
Probably only and last country in Europe?

[Triband81]

Wow that's strange because my provider E-Plus Germany allows prepaid roaming off of TeliaSonera.

"Finnland

Folgende E-Plus Roaming-Partner stehen Ihnen in Finnland zur

Verf?gung:

Netzanbieter:
Sonera Ltd. /Mobile Telephone Services"

[Effendi]

Oh yes, also Elisa Eesti allows roaming on Elisa Finland, but not vice-versa, which is quite weird... maybe also because prepaids are much more common in EE rather than in FI... anyway it's really strange that no Finnish operator allow any form of prepaid roaming.