OREANDA-NEWS. November 21, 2007. Mobile services operator life:) announces its plan to launch MVNO (Mobile virtual network operator) in Italy which would be serving Ukrainians living and working in this country. The launch of life:) Italy is planned for the second quarter of 2008 year.

According to the statistical data, there are more two hundred thousands Ukrainians living in Italy and keeping close ties with their families left in Ukraine. In order to help these people to establish efficient and cost-wise communication with their relatives in Ukraine, life:) launches mobile operations in Italy in partnership with an Italian operator. As a result, life:) Italy will offer special affordable tariffs for calling between Italy and Ukraine. Moreover, life:) Italy will serve Ukrainians in their native language by providing help via life:) Ukraine’s call center, content services and news in Ukrainian language.

life:) will be launching operations in Italy in a partnership with the Italian operator ”3 Italia” - leader of the UMTS market in the country with over 7.7 million customers (on August 22nd, 2007) providing wide variety of multimedia, video communication and internet services.

As life:) General Director Tansu Yegen commented: “We know that a lot of Ukrainians living abroad need convenient ways of communication with their families left in Ukraine. We are sure we will be able to meet their needs in such communication by providing affordable tariffs and by serving these people in their own language. We believe that life:) Italy will become only a first step as we are targeted at launching similar virtual operators in other countries where big Ukrainian communities live. We hope to serve Ukrainians with high-quality innovative communication services everywhere they prefer to live and work”.

Today ethical MVNOs are proven to be the most successful among MVNOs operations in the world. There are approximately 360 planned or operational MVNOs world-wide serving 20 million subscribers around the world according to consultancy firm Takashi Mobile.