2degrees claims 550% sales jump after ads targeting XT
On Tuesday, 2degrees launched a "Feeling disconnected?" campaign aimed at long-suffering Telecom XT users.
While the mobile newcomer has less room to manoeuvre than Vodafone (2degrees won't upgrade its network to 3G until later this year), the campaign does push the telcos txt and calling rates, and half price phones.
"Sales have gone up 550% on the February daily average," 2degrees head of corporate communications Bryony Hilless told NBR on Friday.
"Our call centre has also seen a big hike in calls," Ms Hilless added.
"Typically we'd do around 2,000 calls a day to the call centre. That's now up at around 3,000 calls and that increase is about people enquiring specifically about how to join 2degrees, how do they port their number".
At its February 12 announcement that it had secured 206,000 customers during its first six months, 2degrees chief executive Eric Hertz said 80% who ported (brought their old phone number across) came from Vodafone - as could be expected considering the two networks share compatible phones.
But the centre of gravity was shifting, said Mr Hertz, with more Telecom customers now starting to come across.
At the time - predating the latest XT outage - Mr Hertz said the number of XT defectors was "in the hundreds, not thousands".
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Comments and questions3
I think that people who jump ship now are only in for a big surprise later when Vodafone and 2 degrees need to upgrade. The same tech difficulties will hit them when they start especially in light of the fact that they need to grow exponentially and to a technology that will be more demanding. XT may have a broken wing now but once the issues are sorted they're way ahead. I see it as going through the pain now and being able to use the new intelligence of the network as a benefit in future ....something the other 2 players have not considered doing.
Really? So Vodafone and 2degrees will need to upgrade? How exactly? I mean 2degrees have hawai based 2g/3g network and vodafone has already had 3g for some time. How do they need to upgrade? to HSPDA?
or to 4G? 4G is a completely new technology. The only advancement telecom has is their backhull capabilities.
I agree with the last persons comments. Both Vodafone and 2 Degrees have solid, well designed networks and will have no problems with upgrading. Telecom has had a history of troubles. The best network they had in moy opion was the old analougue (025) network which was built by Ericsson and then managed by Telecom. It all started to go wrong when they made a choice to go CDMA instead of GSM. CDMA is a good technology and shares many things with GSM however there was very little future CMDA handset support from major players like Nokia and Sony Ericsson and global roaming was not well supported.
2 degrees has taken a more pragmatic approach and has roled out a network that is both backward compatible (with current 2g and edge GSM handsets) and also forward looking 3g (UMTS) type services.
Good luck to them I say as they are a little like Jetstar in the NZ marketplace. Yes they will make some mistakes, however they are nibble about using the best they have and not over selling their capability.
Hamond in a racing jet telling how much faster he can send a pxt photo is just plan silly and who cares anyway. The most important feature is that the txt, pxt or voice call gets to it's distination. Not who can get there faster