NEW YORK-Cellhire Global Phone Rental plc, headquartered in York, England, will open its first office outside the United Kingdom, Aug. 1, on Broadway near Wall Street in the financial district of New York City.
The wholly owned American subsidiary, Cellhire Global Phone Rental USA, first plans to target large corporations that have a cadre of executives who travel abroad. Following other avenues of its success in Europe, Cellhire also plans to establish commission-based relationships with retailers who refer individual customers seeking handset rental for overseas travel.
Additionally, the company intends to offer year-long lease arrangements to companies that wish either to outsource entirely their wireless handset inventory management or to upgrade their equipment frequently but without resale and purchase headaches.
As it does in Europe, Cellhire plans to work with large travel agencies catering to corporate accounts and with major hotel chains and car rental companies. Cellhire also serves as a customer service center for the handset rental business of other wireless carriers, including Rogers Cantel Inc. as well as AT&T Corp.’s Call Card program in Europe. This is another area of business exploration in the United States.
Neither last nor least, Cellhire services include fast delivery of cellular handsets to companies experiencing either natural or manmade disasters.
A case in point: Within hours after rank and file postal workers of the Royal Mail in England went on strike early this month, Cellhire had delivered thousands of rental units for use in deployment of managerial personnel.
“Why pay $900 to buy a GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) phone when you only need to use it for a few weeks out of the year?” said Paul Gilmore, a Cellhire veteran who is the new USA general manager. “Or, you might want to rent the phone to see how you like it before you go out and buy one.”
The majority of Cellhire’s current customers rent handsets for 10 to 14 days at a time, at a rate of about $99, which includes Federal Express delivery and pickup of the units. The rental rates are lower for longer periods of time and higher for shorter periods. Additionally, overall rates in the United States may be reduced compared to those in Europe if mailing charges prove to be lower, Gilmore said.
Cellhire, a privately held firm established in 1987, now ranks as Europe’s largest phone rental company, according to Gilmore. Cellhire is the only purely rental company in the United Kingdom to possess a Vodafone license as service provider, thereby permitting Cellhire customers instant access to the Vodafone network.
Vodafone has licenses to operate in more than 40 countries, mostly in Europe, but also in Australia and parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Cellular handsets with features that include voice mail recall are the sole rental option from Cellhire today, although the company also is looking at the possibility of renting personal communications services handsets, Gilmore said. “We’re purely digital,” he added.
Construction workers have been hard at work refinishing Cellhire’s new offices. Once up and running, the new facility will comprise a round-the-clock, seven-day-a-week customer service center. “We’ll carry a stock of phones that we own and service, but we won’t have a retail store,” Gilmore said.
The first target is New York City, primarily Manhattan. Once that business is established, Cellhire will be looking around for opportunities in other major metropolitan areas, Gilmore said.
