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Mobile phone users with prepaid phones will be wooed from today by a newcomer to the mobile phone market with a service offering cheaper calling rates and 30-day contracts.
The newest company to enter the competitive mobile telephone market, Black+White, said its new service launched today would offer prepay users savings on mobile call charges without having to sign long-term contracts.
Black+White chief executive and owner of the company, Johnathan Eele, said 70 per cent of New Zealand's 4.1 million mobile phone users had pre-paid phones compared with 40 per cent internationally.
He said they paid a higher calling rate than users on a 24 or 36-month contract.
The new service offered today offered 30-day maximum contracts, 600 free texts a month and a maximum calling rate of 60 cents a minute.
He said the pre-pay rate at anytime on other networks was normally 89 cents a minute.
"The potential is massive, 70 per cent of New Zealanders are on pre-pay which means they could all move tomorrow."
He said 70 per cent of users opted for pre-paid mobile phones because they had few other choices.
He said the new service was unprecedented and people were "fed up to the back teeth" with paying high rates on pre-pay, and with long-term contracts.
The new service would use the Vodafone network and cover 97 per cent of the population.
Mr Eele said the new service would also offer roaming in 120 countries. Existing 021, 027 or 029 numbers could be switched to the new network. New numbers would have an 028 prefix.
- NZPA
