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Carphone Warehouse

What are their main products?

In terms of distribution, Carphone Warehouse acts as an intermediary between mobile network operators and mobile manufacturers on the one hand, and retail customers on the other.

MViva is Carphone Warehouse's data services division and was launched in 2000. This includes services such as SMS (Short Message Service) alerts, audio-texting, ringtones and icons. MViva has arrangements with over 200 third party content and service providers, offering a wide range of information, e-commerce and other services to the user. It allows Carphone Warehouse to build on its revenues from its existing customer base by generating income from advertising and fee income from content providers when a Carphone Warehouse customer signs up to these additional services.

Carphone Warehouse has agreements with a number of European mobile network operators that provide a share of air-time revenue resulting from introducing Carphone Warehouse customers to those operators.

In addition, Carphone Warehouse has expanded its facilities management services with the purchase of French telecoms services business CMC and the acquisition of Cellcom in the UK. This has increased Carphone Warehouse's interest in after-sales services offered to customers, providing billing, customer call and messaging services.

Fresh is Carphone Warehouse's MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) Business, which was launched in 1999. This followed an agreement with O2 (formerly known as BT-Cellnet), which provides Carphone Warehouse customers with access to O2's network.

Fresh is Carphone Warehouse's attempt to create a tariff structure which combines the advantages associated with the traditional subscription and pre-pay services. The service is promoted on the strength of: low monthly rental charges, no contracts, credit checks or paper billing, monthly customer billing by SMS and air-time top-up notification by SMS.

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