WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Thursday, March 3, 2005
Wireless company targets teens, young adults
By Geoff Kirbyson

The only thing that surprised Lorane Poersch about Tuesday's launch of Virgin Mobile Canada, the first wireless company in the country to primarily target teens and young adults, is that it took so long.

Poersch said the Virgin initiative makes perfect business sense because the youth demographic spends the most time using mobile phones, especially in ways most older people don't -- or can't -- including text messaging and downloading images.

"It's a whole different product for young people," the president and CEO of Crazyfunbabe, an aggregator and developer of mobile entertainment content for females 16 to 24, said in an interview.

Virgin Mobile is a joint venture between Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Bell Canada. Its approach, pioneered in Britain and since exported to Australia and the United States, is to piggyback its communications traffic on somebody else's wireless network -- in this case Bell Canada's -- rather than building its own.

Virgin Mobile also focuses on offering prepaid services, rather than signing customers to long-term contracts, which is the preference for the established cellphone companies, although they also have prepaid offerings.

Poersch launched Crazyfunbabe in 2002 after starting its parent company, KidsWebTv, a provider of digital entertainment content, seven years earlier. In addition to all its functionality, Poersch said, a cellphone and its mobile entertainment are seen as fashion accessories by many girls.

"Not just their phone, but what they have on that phone is an extension of their personality. Girls like to change things often, they like variety and accessorizing their phone depending on what they're doing or what their mood is," she said.

Poersch, who recently returned from the 3GSM World Congress on the mobile industry in Cannes, France, said the number of handsets is expected to grow from 1.3 billion today to three billion by 2008.

'More than just talk'

Mobile data services, of which entertainment plays a significant part, is expected to grow to more than $100 billion US over the same time.

"It's more than just talk," she said. Iain Grant, managing director of the SeaBoard Group, a Montreal-based telecommunications consulting company, said Virgin, with its youthful appeal and edgy advertising, should help expand the cellphone market.

"I think it's going to breathe some new life into the marketplace. Cellphone utilization is stuck at less than 40 per cent of the population in Canada. In some parts of Europe it's at more than 100 per cent, meaning some people have more than one phone, they might have two or three," he said in an interview.

Grant said even though Virgin isn't scheduled to come to Manitoba yet, its presence will undoubtedly be felt.

"MTS (Manitoba Telecom Services) and Rogers will begin to shift their plans to mitigate against any damage Virgin might do. Manitobans will benefit from an increase in customer service friendliness and lower prices," he said.
Rebecca Parkinson, Tim Riedel & Lorane Poersch

The company has already been subtly laying the groundwork for its arrival with a teaser advertising campaign in recent weeks inviting people to visit the website (www.curethecatch.com).

Virgin Mobile currently has 8.5 million customers in three countries -- five million in the United Kingdom, where it started, three million in the United States and half a million in Australia.