A group of cooperatives commercially launched the virtual mobile operator service (MVNO), with the Imowi brand, in 32 locations in the province of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, on the network of the Movistar firm, giving shape to a project that began to gestate five years ago.
“The Imowi service is operating in 32 locations in the interior, and we aspire to take it to those where there is no mobile phone service today”The head of the Chamber of Telephone Cooperatives (Catel), Ariel Fernández, told Télam.
He added that “The beginnings of Catel have a lot to do with quadruple play, we were born thinking that we could lead the telecommunications market and the launch of Imowi puts us at the table” of discussion in the sector.
“We will be able to see the fruits of this work as time goes by and the facts reflect how important it is to have a cooperative actor in this strategic area,” he stressed.
Imowi is an initiative that began to be discussed among cooperatives in 2015 and 2016 and after various delays related to regulatory and financial matters, finally in the last months of last year they presented the brand and now announced the commercial launch of the service.
The virtual mobile operator model is one that provides services on the network of a pre-existing mobile operator. In this case, the cooperative members’ agreement is with Movistar.
The first virtual mobile operator for cooperatives in Argentina was created by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (Fecosur), on the networks of the Personal company, of the Telecom Group.
Imowi’s base offer is $705 for a 3 gigabyte mobile line, with calls, text messages and WhatsApp; to which “data bonuses of different capacities and duration” can be added.
Imowi’s base offer is $705 for a 3 gigabyte mobile line, with calls, text messages and WhatsApp; to which “data bonuses of different capacities and duration” can be added.
At the same time, each of the cooperatives that provide service in the 32 locations where they have already launched commercial activity can add mobile telephony service within the packages that they already offer for fixed telephony, internet and TV.
Fernandez noted that “each cooperative will operate in each locality and they can complete the quadruple play offer”, term with which the provider of 4 services is called: fixed and mobile telephony, internet and cable TV.
“Each cooperative that is associated with the project is the local muscle, the last mile, and each one of them will increase the marketing area,” added Fernández.
The main cities of the Imowi service are Del Viso -where the TelViso cooperative operates-, Pinamar (Telpin), San Miguel del Monte (Mount Cooperative), Tortuguitas (Cooperative of Tortuguitas) and Villa Gobernador Gálvez (TelVGG).
From Del Viso Service is provided to the towns of Maquinista Savio, Ingeniero Maschwitz, Belén De Escobar, Matheu, Pilar, Villa Rosa, Presidente Derqui, Manuel Alberti, Del Viso, La Lonja, Garín (town managed jointly with the Coop. de Tortuguitas).
From the header installed in Tortuguitas, the localities reached are José Clemente Paz, Tortuguitas, and Malvinas Argentinas; while from Pinamar the clients of the cooperative of Cariló, Montecarlo, Ostende, Pinamar and Valeria Del Mar are supplied.
From Mount the area of influence is the towns of Cañuelas, Coronel Brandsen, Loma Verde, Las Flores, San Miguel Del Monte, Gobernador Udaondo, Gorchs, Abbott, Lobos, Empalme Lobos.
Y from Villa Gobernador Galvez, in Santa Fe, the neighboring towns of Alvear and Pueblo Esther are also supplied.
The main cities of the Imowi service are Del Viso -where the TelViso cooperative operates-, Pinamar (Telpin), San Miguel del Monte (Mount Cooperative), Tortuguitas (Cooperative of Tortuguitas) and Villa Gobernador Gálvez (TelVGG).
Coinciding with the spirit of cooperativism, the initiative “does not have a single protagonist,” Fernandez stressed after highlighting the role of the Cooperative for the Provision and Marketing of Community Broadcasting Services (Colsecor).
Catel and Colsecor, together with the group of cooperatives that are part of this first stage of the project, have a presence in more than 400 locations, Colsecor indicated.
“63% of our associates, who are the heart of this project, have less than 500 homes”, highlighted the person in charge of new projects at Colsecor, Miguel Factor.
He stressed that “we have come to provide the experience of providing services where it is not profitable, where often the numbers do not add up, where the investment is recovered in the long term: cooperatives are used to that, not thinking about short-termism.”
Both cooperative leaders assured that the conditions are in place to deploy the mobile telephony service to localities that are today disconnected.
In this regard, Factor explained that in parallel to all the work that today converges in the commercial launch, the main objective has also been marked by “the idiosyncrasy of cooperatives to bring services where others are not.”
Imowi has projection and capacity to serve users of more than 1,000 cooperatives and 1,500 SMEs throughout the country through their own subscriber management systems, they indicated.
