Frequently Asked Questions

  • No,

    You will always meet and negotiate with your most important customers and trading partners face to face, and Cicada Exchange will complement this by allowing you to manage your relationship with everyone else in a positive and controlled way for the rest of the year.

    Cicada Exchange will give you the visibility and option to trade additional and incremental roaming deals both as HPMN and VPMN.

    Members looking to grow inbound roaming can also post deals as VPMN into their home market to boost their inbound roaming revenues.

  • There is no charge to become a Member of the Exchange. We only charge a nominal fee on any completed transactions going through the exchange.

    Contact sales@cicadaexchange.com for more details.

  • Because you will miss out on deals if you are not a Member of the Exchange !

    Members of Cicada Exchange are already posting RFQ's into your home market(s) at regular intervals, these deals are only visible for operators that are members of the Exchange.

    Members are under no obligation to trade, but as a member of Cicada Exchange you will get visibility of all deals, and you can then self decide if you want to trade or place counteroffers.

    The Exchange is free to join, and our Members only pay a nominal percentage fee for any roaming deals transacted over the Exchange.

    In other words, it is risk free to join in line with our "Nothing to lose - Everything to Gain" proposition.

  • All Members of the Exchange have full visibility of all RFQ’s and counteroffers that are placed into countries all over the world.

    When a Member places an RFQ It is important for them that their competitors don’t know what volumes and prices they offer on the Exchange.

    Hence the need to keep the posting company of an RFQ’s anonymous until the deal is done.

    As you don’t know who has posted an RFQ, we have introduced a sophisticated ‘Risk Manager’ where our Members control 100% who they want and don’t want to deal with through the Exchange.

    If you attempt to trade an RFQ, the ‘Risk Manager’ will only allow for the trade to complete if both parties have opened for trading with eachother.

  • No,

    Cicada Exchange will never reveal Members of the Exchange unless agreed with the Member beforehand. The reason for this is that all Members have full visibility of all RFQ’s that are posted into any country in the world.

    EXAMPLE:

    If MobComTel is one of two Members in Ireland, and places a counteroffer on an RFQ posted into Ireland, then it would be visible to everyone, including their competitor, what prices MobComTel are offering.

    This might not be acceptable for MobComTel, and hence it could restrict the value of the Exchange as a trading platform.

    The anonymity is not a problem as each Member configure who they want to deal with in the ‘Risk Manager’. In this way you can ensure you only get deals with companies you are willing to trade with.

  • Our Members spend as much or as little time on the Exchange as they wish.

    As an example, it only takes you 2 minutes to post an RFQ with your outbound roaming traffic needs into any country in the world. You can then log of, and wait for the response from operators in the target country regardless of what timezone they are located in.

    Many Members save a lot of time as they find that it is quicker to post or trade an RFQ than it is to even agree a meeting time with a potential roaming partner.

  • There is no limit to the number of contracts that can be concluded.

  • You can trade monthly, quarterly and yearly (including the 2 upcoming calendar years.)

    You can also set a start period, and end period to create a bespoke ‘Strip’ (combined time period) for the RFQ.

    On top of this you can select ‘Auto Renewal’ so that the selected RFQ keeps autorenewing until cancelled according to the Exchange TnC’s.

  • Yes,

    Mobile operator groups can trade as HPMN collectively as a group by posting ‘Multi Territory’ RFQ’s into a country.

    Operators in the target country looking to trade that RFQ, will see that this is a ‘Multi Territory’ RFQ coming from a mobile operator group, but they will not see which operator group posted the RFQ.

    When trading as a ‘group’, the offer will be placed by the master company within the group (as configured on the Exchange), and it will be that master company’s ‘Risk Manager’ configuration that applies for this RFQ.

    Likewise, for the VPMN looking to trade this RFQ, it is their ‘Risk Manager’ settings towards the groups master company that will decide if the deal is completed or not.

  • Yes,

    You can view all RFQ’s other Members as HPMN posted into your home market, and as MNO you can trade or place counteroffers on these RFQ’s if and swhen it suits you.

    You can also post RFQ’s as VPMN into your own home market. This is often done by Members who wishes to gain marketshare of the inbound roaming revenues.

    An operator may also decide to post deals as VPMN to take on traffic onto their network if e.g. there is a specific event.

    EXAMPLE:

    If the Olympic games are held in your country in quarter 3 of the year, then you might post an RFQ for Q3 only with specific package rates for a set volume of traffic.

  • No,

    Cicada Exchange focus exclusively on the commercial pricing, and build on that AA.12 /AA.13 are already in place. You therefore configure the ‘Risk Manager’ to leave trading open with the parties with whom you have these agreements in place.

    However, as trading stops one month before the RFQ timeperiod starts, you can still leave trading open with a counterparty if you are confident that you can get AA.12/AA.13 in place within that time period.

    If you however believe you might need e.g. three months to get the AA.12/AA.13 in place with a specific counter party, then you could post an RFQ early, and then cancel/retract the RFQ if it has not yet been traded with three months to go before the time period starts.

    Cicada Exchange will happily help you get your Risk and Trading strategy on the Exchange aligned before you commence trading.

  • Yes,

    Cicada Exchange gives you the opportunity to place RFQ’s with optional ‘Price Bands’ (Tiered Pricing) down to each product level independently with as many bands as you like.

    You can also for each product independently select if you want to go ‘All In’ (Back to first).

  • Yes, Cicada Exchange can facilitate bidding.

    Example:

    A Member places a low bid into a country with several mobile operators.

    Each of the operators in the target country can see this bid, but will not accept the price as-is. They therefore respond by placing counteroffers they are willing to accept.

    You could therefore often find a scenario like this on the Exchange:

    1) HPMN places an RFQ with a unitprice of €0.50

    2) Operator #1 counteroffer with €0.90

    3) Operator #2 counteroffer with €0.85

    4) Operator #3 counteroffer with €0.75

    5) The HPMN then accepts the counteroffer from operator #3.

    The Cicada team will happily demonstrate further, so feel free to contact us for a chat.

  • Yes,

    When you place an RFQ, you can choose to set the volume for one or more products to - 0 - Zero, and hence you are only asking for a price for that/those products.

    We do however see that because of the ‘anonymity’ aspect, it is less attractive for a counterparty to accept an RFQ with only Zero volumes.

    Often Members are better off combining Zero volume products with some products with set volumes.

    Example RFQ:

    Voice Zero Volume price €xx

    SMS Zero Volume price €xx

    Data 50.000 GB price €xx

    In the above example the HPMN gives a clear commitment on the Data product, while the prices for Voice and SMS products are set, but with no commitment on volumes.

    This makes the RFQ more attractive for counterparties.