Plintron, a niche player in the enterprise mobile convergence space, has entered Portugal mobile market with its partner Lycamobile (News - Alert), marking its successful integration and testing with Vodafone Portugal.

Plintron provided the technology platform and end to end customer management, enabling Lycamobile to commence its services in Portugal.  Industry experts opined that the move into Portugal will extend Lycamobile’s footprint across Europe to over 85 percent of the European population.

“Our €250m or around US $ 320m investment in people, process, technology and brand over the past decade has enabled Lycamobile to move fast and maintain a superior service to our customers,” said Subaskaran Allirajah, group chairman of Lycamobile in a statement.

“Launching in the Portuguese market is a significant milestone for Lycamobile. Not only does it cement our position as having the greatest coverage of the European population than any other mobile operator, it also enables us to provide affordable high quality international calls to the Portuguese communities in countries where Lycamobile already operates,” he said.

Milind Kangle, group chief executive of Lycamobile said that the company is aware that many customers will be using the service to call friends and relatives in Brazil and around the world.

“Our launch offer includes the opportunity for Portuguese residents to call back home for just three cents per minute to landlines and 9cents per minute to mobile. In addition to this our customers will get one flat national rate of eight cents for calls to mobiles, landlines and SMS,” said Kangle.

Mohan Kumar Sundaram, founder and chief executive officer, Plintron said that Portugal has a modern and flexible telecommunications market with one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in the world.  

“We intend to tap MVNA opportunities where existing or new brands can take the MVNA route to telecom, and we are glad we are prepared completely to offer MVNA services as well,” he said.