Cellular telephone company Partner-Orange has activated roaming agreements for twenty countries in Europe and the Far East, and thereby entered into competition with Pele-Phone, Cellcom, and other companies that rent telephones to travelers overseas.
Partner works with GSM digital cellular technology, which enables subscribers of an operator in one country to use their own telephones in every country where their operator has a roaming agreement with one of that country’s operators. The technology is based on the use of a smart card which can be inserted into any GSM instrument, turning it into the holder’s personal instrument.
The countries in which Partner now has roaming agreements are: France, Holland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Bulgaria, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Turkey, Estonia, Slovenia, Georgia, Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore, the island of Jersey, and Portugal. Partner deputy general manager for marketing Ya’akov Kidmi said that, by the beginning of January, another forty roaming agreements would come into force.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on December 8, 1998