The international retail giant Carrefour will cooperate with the Taiwan-based Chunghwa Telecom to jointly provide mobile communication services in a mobile virtual network operator cooperative model in Taiwan.

Under this model, the operators do not need to build their own base station or network. Instead, they directly cooperate with the local operators to rent the broadband resources and provide customers with telecom services under their own brands.

Carrefour will use CHT's 2G infrastructure to become the fourth MVNO in Taiwan. All of Carrefour's 55 chain stores around Taiwan will make up the network of retail outlets for the MVNO business operation. The retailer has set up a subsidiary named Carrefour Telecom to operate its mobile communication services. These services will be available in two methods, one is with the pre-paid cards and the other is with a fixed monthly fee of NTD99.

Loic Dubois, general manager of Carrefour, said that during the promotional period, Carrefour will offer a program that enables cardholders to earn one point for every dollar spent at Carrefour stores. A hundred points can be exchanged for one minute of telephone time. In the future, the company will launch more special offers for its mobile phone users, including sending messages about Carrefour's promotions directly to the mobile phones of Carrefour Telecom's users.