KEY POINTS:
The mobile market's newest player, Black + White, is promising to help prepay users save on mobile calling without having to sign long-term contracts.
To launch the mobile operator yesterday, chief executive Johnathan Eele, who is a former Telecom executive, dressed himself as a revolutionary and led a march in front of Telecom's Beresford St building declaring war on prepay pricing.
Black + White is offering no-term contracts in combination with a simple menu of calling, text and email plans that will especially benefit those with prepay mobiles.
Eele said 70 per cent of mobile users in New Zealand use prepaid mobiles, but in other countries that figure is closer to 40 per cent.
"Those figures show that Kiwis don't want to be locked into complicated plans for up to three years - and until now they've been paying through the nose for the freedom of not having a mobile account," he said.
Black + White is a web-based business employing five staff and it has a wholesale agreement through ASX listed telco M2 to use the Vodafone GSM network.
Eele claimed that any prepaid customer on rival networks who sent two text messages and made two phone calls per day would be better off with Black + White.
The network is able to keep its charges low because it does not have "flash offices or retails stores with lots of staff wages and rents to pay", he said.
New customers can buy mobiles at parallel imported prices via the company's website www.bw.co.nz. All 027, 021 or 029 numbers can be transferred to the Black + White network.
Vodafone spokesperson Paul Brislen told the Business Herald that Vodafone was "delighted" to see Black + White on the scene.
Telecom spokesperson Rebecca Earl said the company welcomed competition and had been aware for some time that the network launch was coming.
As for the choice of venue for Eele's "revolution", Earl said Telecom believed the real revolution was a couple of weeks ago when Telecom announced access to the most advanced 3G mobile services available.
Forsyth Barr analyst Guy Hallwright said Black + White had "no real gear of their own and are just repricing Vodafone plans". Its success would depend on its marketing.
