ENTREPRENEUR Stelios Haji-Ioannou announced his latest venture with plans for a mobile phone service.
The easyMobile proposal from the founder of budget airline easyJet enables customers to buy SIM cards and pre-paid airtime for their handsets.
The online venture also involves Danish telecoms company TDC, which will handle billing and the running of the network. It has yet to finalise an agreement to buy airtime from one or more of the mobile operators.
TDC, which runs a similar service in Denmark, hopes to launch in the UK in the autumn with plans to spread to 11 other European countries.
Mr Haji-Ioannou said he believed Internet-based retailing was about to take the mobile phone market by storm.
He said: "I have now discovered that the best-of-class business model is the one practised in Denmark, where prices for consumers have come down significantly.
"Selling just SIM cards from a website with cheap pre-paid airtime is the most efficient way to use mobile telephony."
He said the service would cover a different market to the rest of the sector, where companies were pushing Internet and picture-based services. Mr Haji-Ioannou has 14 brands operating under the easyGroup banner, including Internet cafs and bus travel.
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