Two Degrees will launch in August as our third mobile operator without any of its own stores. Instead it will sell its cellphones, plans and SIM cards through partners including petrol stations and supermarkets will let it leverage off “prepay customer behaviour created by Telecom and Vodafone”.

Certainly, there won't be many condusive environments for sitting down and signing a contract.

Two Degrees’ chief sales and marketing officer told NBR that there is no change to the telco’s retail plan, which in June it described as a mix of its own stores, and retail partners.

“There’s no change. It’s just that the stores are not in our launch profile from day one. But they are in our roadmap," said 2degrees head of marketing Larrie Moore.

Two Degrees will have a blitz of 2700 retail outlets selling its SIM cards and handsets, drawn from the following chains: Noel Leeming, Bond & Bond, Dick Smith Electronics, Warehouse Stationery, Pak & Save, New World, Foodtown, Countdown, Woolworths, Shell, Mobil, BP and other independently owned petrol stations served by Red Circle, along with Gilmours, Toops and Trents.

Battle for Auckland
Nationwide, Telecom owns 28 retail stores directly, and has 86 partner stores through Orb and Leading Edge, five kiosks in high traffic malls and hundreds of retailers through multi-channel device sales in the like of Dick Smith Electronics, Bond and Bond, Powerhouse, Smith City, The Warehouse, Harvey Norman, Power Store and Noel Leeming.

Vodafone owns a number of flagship stores, but most, although red-badged are operated by partners DigiMobile and First Mobile (130 stores all up) - as well as multichannel retailers such as Bond & Bond and The Warehouse and others.

Analysts have long credited Vodafone’s larger retail presence as the reason behind its big lead in the Auckland market. Telecom’s new head of retail, Alan Gourdie, has opening acknowledged this fact, and has made opening new stores, getting more presence in malls, and sprucing up existing stores central to XT’s launch. Mr Gourdie has even gone as far as analysing customer behaviour recorded on camera at a Telecom outlet in Albany, which tracked customer behaviour to help with remodelling.

"To support the launch of our XT, we have rolled out a new design and fit-out for retail stores that includes a slick new layout, interactive displays and wireless hotspots. Six stores were open with the new design for launch day with 12 further stores to being refitted over the coming months," says sponsorship and mobile PR manger Rebecca Earl.

Where Telecom & Vodafone customers work, live .. and shop
Two Degrees’ Mr Moore is taking a more guerrilla approach.

“Where do Telecom and Vodafone customers go to top up?,” he asks “Groceries, and petrol stations and electrical outlets. We’ll be able to leverage off their marketing.”

He denies that a presence centred around supermarkets and other meat-and-potatoes retail outlets implies that the telco will target the low end of the market.

“You and I are both heavy mobile users,” he told NBR. “And we both go to the supermarket.”

Mr Moore said once Two Degrees’ does open its own stores, they will be relatively few in number.

“We will have stores but not to the same extraordinary excess as Vodafone and Telecom,” said Mr Moore, before dropping in one of Two Degrees’ trademark conspiracy theories:

“One Vodafone or Telecom store on every corner of every high street excessive. I want to know who’s paying for those stores. That’s the question consumers should be asking.”

Two Degrees has yet to announce its exact launch date, or its line up of handsets and plans.