North Rock Communications Ltd plans to launch a mobile phone service as it aims to make itself a “one-stop shop” telecommunications company.General manager Vicki Coelho revealed the company's plans in an interview yesterday, following the opening of North Rock's new retail customer service centre at the corner of Church Street and Washington Lane in Hamilton.Under the current telecommunications licensing regime, North Rock is restricted to offering internet services. The company's planned cell phone service will work by connecting to a wireless internet network. The company already offers IP-based home phone services.The IP (Internet Protocol) phones may be available by early next year, Ms Coelho said, and the company has already installed some 20 base stations.The move will put North Rock into competition with cellular providers Digicel, CellularOne and M3 Wireless. The cellular providers previously entered the market of internet service providers like North Rock by offering internet services through their own wireless network.Advances in technology have allowed many players in the telecommunications market to cross the boundaries between services originally envisaged in the licensing system. Government has proposed industry reform that will lift most of those restrictions.“We already provide our customers with internet, wireless, long-distance and local voice services,” Ms Coelho said. “We hope to have our IP-based cell phones by the beginning of next year. We want to be a one-stop shop for our customers, so they don't need to go anywhere else.”When the Government enacts its proposed reforms, Ms Coelho expects some merger and acquisition activity to take place.“We anticipate there will be more consolidation, but I'm not sure what that's going to look like,” she added.The new retail space moves the operation to a more prominent position on Church Street from its previous location on the lower level of Washington Mall. It has a fresh, modern appearance and includes an area where North Rock customers can browse the internet on a laptop and phones they can use to make a call, free of charge.Environment, Planning and Infrastructure Minister Walter Roban, whose portfolio includes telecommunications, was there to cut the ribbon to officially open the new premises.North Rock's corporate offices are in the new Power House building in Par-la-Ville Road.Ms Coelho said she hoped the new-look store would lift the morale of staff and give customers a more pleasant environment to visit the company. Although the economy is struggling, she is banking on better times around the corner.“We are pretty bullish about Bermuda and optimistic that Bermuda will pull out of recession by later this year,” Ms Coelho said.“Our customer base has been very stable even though there may be 2,000 to 3,000 fewer people on the Island.”She added that North Rock was the only ISP not to have outsourced any of its services outside Bermuda and this seemed to have been an approach that customers favoured.The partners involved in making over the new premises included interior designer Nancy Desouza, of Terceira Quarterly, and Greymane Contracting, the general contractor for Washington Properties. Ms Coelho said the outfitting of the store had cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars.