Dominican Slugfest.

• Author: Poole, Claire
• Position: Mercadeo de las tarjetas telef

Tiny Tricom shows the world how to batter a multinational telephone company.

Prepaid phone cards are a dime a dozen these days. But Dominican telephone company Tricom offers a series of cards featuring its main pitchman, Chicago Cubs slugger and national hero Sammy Sosa, hitting each of his 66 homeruns last year. The telecom even sells customers a binder in which to collect the cards after the minutes are spent. It also offers prizes, including trips to Chicago to see Sosa play, for those who collect a full set. Since the slugger's endorsement, sales of its calling cards--mainly in the United States--have soared out of the park.

Such cleverness is just one example of how Tricom, once just a low-rent call center, has transformed itself into a potential giant killer in one of the world's busiest long-distance markets.

By the time Sosa signed on last year, Tricom was a US$125 million company going head to head with Codetel, the GTE-controlled telco that owned the Dominican market. "They've converted from a piddling little long-distance company into a big, true competitor," says ING Barings analyst Christopher Taylor. "It's a real example of how emerging telephony should be done." Since its 1990 start, Tricom has added cellular, international and now local calling. An Internet service provider as well, Tricom is now finalizing plans to offer its own Spanish-language portal, competing against the likes of Yahoo!, StarMedia, and Yupi.

Over the years, Codetel hasn't sat still. "Every time Tricom pushes, Codetel pushes back" Deutsche Bank analyst Christina Blanco says. Codetel used to charge $5 per minute for international calls, but dropped rates to punish the upstart as soon as long-distance competition began. Tricom switched gears, focusing on its cellular business, which it has built up to 141,000 units, or 52% of the market. "I won't say they're not waking up," says Javier García, Tricom's vice president of corporate finance. GTE's subsidiary still controls 88% of the local access market, though Tricom has snapped up the remainder in short order.

Building a war chest. Tricom was founded by Grupo Financiero Nacional, owner of the country's largest insurance company, its biggest credit-card issuer and its third-largest bank. First came the calling centers in 1992; Tricom added cellular and long-distance service in 1994.

That's when the company caught Motorola's eye. The multi-national supplier of switches and handsets offered to back $32 million...