Matrix Cellular taps outbound professionals

Matrix Cellular Services, that offers post-paid cards to primarily Indian students going to study abroad, is foraying into customised tariff plans for professionals who are moving overseas on work permit.

The company is also tweaking its tariffs and packages to accommodate more lower user groups.

According to Anish Khanna, head of marketing, Matrix Cellular, “We are looking at introducing new plans and bundling our offers with new handset manufacturers as well.”

Matrix Cellular currently offers sim cards to students travelling to the United Kingdom and Australia. For students travelling to US, the company provides the handset as well (currently Sony Ericsson) since US uses ‘quadband’ or a mobile phone that supports four frequency bands.

“We are planning to offer the sim card on select Nokia handsets as well,” said Khanna.

“We have also tied-up with World Phone that can provide a virtual US phone number to residents in India, so everytime residents from India call the number, they pay for local calls and not international call charges,” said Khanna.

The company is exploring the possibility of introducing bundled offers with i-phone as well.

Matrix Cellular has a presence in 30 foreign countries. While it is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in some countries, the company acts as a reseller in some others.

This means, it does not own any infrastructure or spectrum but buys bulk airtime (minutes of traffic) through agreements with operators in each country and sells it to its customers.

For an Indian travelling to the United States, incoming calls are reportedly charged at Rs 75 per minute while outgoing charges are Rs 175 per minute.

Matrix Cellular offers call that are charged at Rs 15 for incoming calls and Rs 30 for the outgoing ones.

Matrix Cellular offers post-paid cards to Indian travellers, allowing them to make calls at much lower rates compared to regular international call charges.