Stelios Haji-Ioannou seems to have too much free time recently. After trying to take the discount pricing model from Easyjet to several other industries he is now ripe for the mobile phone market.

"The founder of the European discount airline EasyJet, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, will be the new face at the conference for mobile phone executives starting on Monday in Cannes, France.

Mr. Haji-Ioannou is planning to apply to the cellphone industry the same strategies that have made discount airlines like his so competitive and profitable, with the promise of cutting mobile phone bills in Europe as much as 50 percent.

The market volume and matureness for phone rates is definitely there. The only question will be if providers will be accepting much lower prices for volume (reseller) contracts. Mobile phone providers on the continent and especially in Germany have been very hesitant with selling minutes at lower prices. They argue that the network capacity is already at its limits and reinvesting wouldn't make sense as 3G is approaching. But more likely it is just a nice cartel.