The launch of Frog Mobile, a new pre-paid mobile brand, introduced an innovative marketing concept to Bulgaria. Although owned by GloBul, Bulgaria’s second-largest mobile operator, the company has hidden its association with the fledgling brand as it is looking to take a novel marketing approach.

Petya Popova, the PR manager for GloBul, confirmed to The Sofia Echo that Frog Mobile was the property of GloBul. The original idea was to try to have GloBul’s network as the only link between the two companies. The new brand is operating as a mobile virtual network operator, this is where one company uses another’s network in return for a traffic fee.

“Frog Mobile was designed to run separately from the GloBul offer,” Popova said.

This was the reason the ownership of the new service was kept secret. Information about the brand was provided by an advertising agency, not GloBul, and it was promoted via its own website (frogmobile.bg), which is totally separate from the parent company.
Frog Mobile products and pre-paid vouchers are being sold from supermarkets, petrol stations and news stands and not through the network of GloBul shops. The new service also has its own code – 0890.

According to local experts, the reason GloBul has distanced itself from Frog Mobile is because there is room for new brands on the market. Also, within a competitive market, companies need to continually innovate to maintain their customer base and attract new users. Although the mobile telephone market is now saturated, with mobile penetration – defined as the number of subscribers divided by the population – at 132.8 per cent at the beginning of the year, mobile users are still likely to sign up to another operator if they have an attractive offer.

Frog Mobile is offering the following. Its website promotes the brand as being the cheapest in Bulgaria, and uses MobilTel’s Loop offer to illustrate this. However unlike Loop, which is aimed at teenagers, Frog Mobile service is available to all users. The initial package costs 7.78 leva. Subscribers receive five leva of free calls, with top-up vouchers costing four or eight leva.

Call charges are 0.14 leva a minute to other Frog users and 0.34 leva a minute to landlines and other networks. The same rate applies to calls to neighbouring countries – Greece, Turkey, Romania, Macedonia, Albania and Serbia. Text messages cost 0.14 leva.
The introduction of Frog Mobile is part of a broader initiative of GloBul’s parent company, Cosmote of Greece. The Frog brand already operates in Greece and Macedonia. Cosmote would not say whether it would also launch the brand in Albania and Romania.

The launch of Frog Mobile comes at an interesting time for the mobile telephone market when customer retention is likely to become the main focus for operators.

On February 26, the three mobile phone operators in Bulgaria signed the number portability agreement, which is intended to facilitate the migration of users from one network to another. GloBul is seen as having put up the biggest barriers in an attempt to stop its users leaving its network.

The company announced that it will re-issue set-term contracts to all its customers. If a client wants to terminate their contract early, they will be subject to a 100 leva penalty. Experts argued that most customers who leave the network will end up paying the fee as it can only be avoided if the customer informs GloBul a minimum of one month before their contract ends that they no longer wish to continue. It is the customer’s responsibility to inform GloBul of their decision, GloBul will not be issuing reminders to customers who have only one month of their existing contract-term left. It is likely that many customers, on learning of the penalty charge, will decide not to swap mobile operators. Any customers that inform GloBul more than one month before their contract ends will still be liable for the remainder of their monthly subscription fees.

MobilTel and vivatel, Bulgaria’s two other mobile operators, are expected to set similar conditions on their customers.
In this sense, experts argue that the launch of Frog Mobile has happened at an opportune moment for GloBul. While GloBul will be tightening its grip on contractual clients, Frog Mobile will be tapping in, through the opposite strategy, to the pool of customers looking for no contractual obligations.

Another indicator that the sector is preparing for increased competition can be seen in the restructuring taking place at Bulgaria Telecommunications Company (BTC). In early March, the company merged the management of its fixed line and mobile phone operations – BTC and vivatel – as the company looked to cut costs and, hence, become more competitive. It is not yet clear how the merger will impact operations at vivatel, but one thing is certain – mobile operators are preparing to work in a more competitive market and the tools they are using are becoming more innovative. Frog Mobile is just one of them.