After a year of offering pre-pay only, swimming at the shallow end of the pool, 2degrees last night launched its first contract plans.
And while 2degrees' pre-pay plans appealed to so-called "glove-box" budget-minded consumers, Telecommunications Users Association (Tuanz) boss Ernie Newman says it's time for corporates, government departments and business "held to ransom" by Telecom and Vodafone to take a look.
“All mobile phone users should warmly welcome 2degrees’ announcement that it is launching a “pay monthly” plan, but the large corporate users who spend thousands or millions of dollars a year on mobiles will be especially pleased,” Mr Newman said.
Tuanz represents around 400 corporate telecommunications buyers.
Held to ransom
"Several of the features [of 2degees' monthly plan] are a great improvement on the restrictive terms which Vodafone and Telecom have used to hold customers to ransom," Mr Newman said.
"For example, 2degrees will allow customers to carry forward unused monthly voice minutes and texts to a subsequent month, rather than forfeit them as the other operators commonly require."
(Customers get 120 calling minutes and 600 txts to any domestic network on the new $39 a month plan - or 44 cents a minute if they use their full allocation).
"And there will be no requirement to commit to long term contracts."
On social networks, 2degrees' entry into the post-paid market was launched with an avalanche of praise.
Not so impressed
Yet not everyone shared the Tuanz boss's view.
"You realise how out of touch Ernie is. Those rates are great for low-use users, most businesses and corporates already pay less," Steve Biddle, a telecommunications contractor and industry commentator for Geekzone, told NBR.
And an insider at one of the two big telcos groused: "Does Ernie work for them [2degrees] now!?"
Game-changer
Combined with the looming government regulation of mobile termination rates - a campaign with which he was closely involved - the new plan is a game-changer, said the Tuanz boss.
Mr Newman, who retires this month, was unabashed in his praise of the new telco.
“Since it launched a year ago, 2degrees has shown the enormous power of a third entrant to take on a comfortable duopoly in an over-priced market and offer real value to users through innovative low pricing,” Mr Newman said.
“The really big beneficiaries will be big corporate users. These organisations have paid excessively by world standards until now, not only for calls from their own staff mobiles, but also for the calls their customers make from mobiles to their landline-based call centres.
"Excessive charges have resulted in some big users including banks and government agencies being forced to bar calls to their 0800 numbers from mobile phones. This is dumb!"
One last time in the ring
And that, incidentally, is Mr Newman's final Tuanz crusade before the advocate hangs up - eliminating excess charges for mobile-to-0800 "toll free" numbers.
But while Mr Newman is brawling right up to his final days on the job, NBR understands the search to replace him is still in its early stages.
NBR staff
Fri, 17 Sep 2010