The Phonespot is offering a free Motorola MOTORAZR V3 Lilac with free line rental on a Virgin Mobile contract. The line rental is normally £20 per month and the free line rental is available via cash back.
The tariff includes 50 minutes and 100 texts a month and saves you £240.
It is the last day of the year and what a year it has been for the broadband, home phone, digital TV and mobile markets.
2006 was the year the free broadband was born and totally revolutionised the industry. In April, TalkTalk were the consumer champions, entering into a brave new world of “free broadband forever”. Now they are the villains, with massive customer service and connection issues. Orange has also suffered similar problems with their free broadband service. Have they tainted the reputation of free broadband? Well, in 2007 consumers will no doubt be very suspicious of free broadband offerings from TalkTalk, Orange and Sky. Many people are already opting to turn their backs on free broadband and instead choosing to pay for a service that is more reliable. Over time, free broadband will recover as providers sort out the problems with the service.
The days of home phone providers being called “Telco’s” and broadband providers being called “ISP’s” are gone. 2006 was the year in which the two became interchangeable. “Convergence” was the new industry buzzword. Home phone providers moved into broadband if they hadn’t already and ISP’s offered home phone and broadband bundled together.
BT finally became slightly competitive with price controls being lifted by the industry regulator, Ofcom. You are still better off to use an alternative provider though.
The UK’s biggest Digital TV provider moved into broadband with its free broadband offering to Sky Digital customer.
Awareness “digital switch over” increased with more noise being made by Ofcom, DigitalUK and providers like Sky, Telewest and ntl.
Naturally, advances in mobile technology continued. 3 mega pixel camera phones became the new threshold that aspiring manufacturers had to reach, with Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia leading the pack.
Cash back deals from mobile retailers became common place with retailers giving money back to customers as long as they send in their mobile bills at designated times.
Convergence with broadband extended to mobile operators with Orange entering the free broadband club (following the rebrading of Wanadoo as Orange Broadband), Virgin Mobile merging with ntl/Telewest, O2 buying broadband provider Be and Vodafone developing its broadband product. T-Mobile is also rumoured to be entering the broadband market soon.
In 2007 we are likely to see the big players like Virgin, Orange, TalkTalk, Vodafone and BT will battle it out of market share. We are likely to see even more consolidation in all markets with these bigger providers buying up the smaller providers. Smaller providers will simply not survive in this cutthroat world.
Convergence will continue with companies offering the triple play products of broadband, home phone and digital TV or broadband, home phone and mobile.
The newly merged Virgin Mobile, ntl and Telewest will be determined to gain some dominance in the market with its quad play offering of broadband, home phone, digital TV and mobile.
It will certainly be an exciting year ahead, and we are likely to see more stellar deals!
Happy New Year
Vodafone has done a partial U-turn and has gone back to Carphone Warehouse. It had signed cancelled its contract with Carphone Warehouse and signed an exclusive deal with Carphone Warehouse’s rival, Phones4U. That prevented Carphone Warehouse from selling Vodafone contract pay monthly mobiles.
Vodafone has changed its mind and will allow Carphone Warehouse to sell contract renewals and pre-pay connections, which makes up some 40% of the business it had lost from Vodafone.
So it seems that the original disagreement was more of a lovers tiff than a divorce, with both parties now at least partially back in bed with each other.
NTL:Telewest are planning on selling their triple offering of broadband, home phone, digital television and mobile phones through Virgin stores next year. The merged company of NTL, Telewest and Virgin Mobile will be re-branded under the Virgin name. Part of the deal allows the products to be sold in Virgin’s 120 high street stores.
This will allow NTL:Telewest to really take on the likes of the Carphone Warehouse. It is also seen as a reversal of the trend for businesses to move their sales functions online.
O2 has dramatically cut the cost of making and receiving calls while roaming overseas. You can now call the UK from Spain on your UK mobile for 25 pence per minute. A “high roamer” service is to be introduced, where incoming calls will be free for a £5 per month fee. This is available on O2 sister network in Spain, Movistar. O2 is going to extend the cut price roaming to 35 international destinations, including the rest of the EU.
The EU has recently been critical of mobile firms across Europe for over charging customer who are roaming outside of their home country. O2 had previously had some of the highest roaming charges.
We hope this move by O2 will be followed the other mobile operators in order to cut the cost of using your mobile while abroad.
There is strong speculation that Apple is in the process of developing an iPod mobile phone and that they have trademarked the name “iPhone”. An Apple insider claims that in the trademark filing, Apple described the iPhone as “handheld and mobile digital electronic device for the sending and receiving of telephone calls, faxes, electronic mail, and other digital data; MP3 and other digital format audio players,”
Watch this space!
A study by Intelecon Research claims that 90% of the world’s population could have mobile coverage by 2010. It is estimated that approximately 80% of the world’s population currently has mobile coverage, but only 40% (2 billion people) actually have a mobile phone.
It is possible for 100% of the world’s population to have mobile coverage, but governments and mobile operators must do more to help extend networks into rural areas, particularly in developing nations. Many governments collect levies from telecom operators, which is used to extend telecommunication coverage into rural areas. However this usually used to extend the fixed-line network rather than mobile network. Fixed-line networks are far more expensive to build.
Carphone Warehouse will not longer be able to sell Vodafone monthly contract phones. Vodafone has signed an exclusive deal with Phones4u. This places a fundamental aspect of the Carphone Warehouse model in jeopardy. Carphone Warehouse will no longer be able to offer a comprehensive range of mobile deals.
Charles Dunstone, Chief Executive of Carphone Warehouse, claims that Vodafone had approached them about signing an exclusive deal, but they refused it: “”We are surprised and disappointed by this decision,” he said. “But we have to protect the impartiality of the advice we give customers and we just could not sign this type of contract.”
This move means that customers are going to ensure that they shop around, as it is no longer possible to compare mobile deals in one retail store.
Save £405 on a Nokia 6111 with Orange. The Phonespot are offering this stellar deal which includes the following:
The newly merged ntl Telewest and Virgin Mobile has announced a bundled broadband, digital TV, home phone and mobile phone service. Industry insiders call this “quad-play”. Until now, the most any single provider has managed to offer is “triple play”, which is a bundle of 3 services, normally broadband, digital TV and home phone.
The new quad-play service offers great value for money. For £40 per month you will receive all four products. You will enjoy the following:
Broadband
Digital TV
Home Phone
Mobile
If you do not want all four services, you can order the Virgin Mobile service with any other ntl or Telewest service for an extra £10 per month (normally £20 per month).
To sign up to the £40 per month broadband, mobile, digital TV and home phone service, visit either the ntl or the Telewest website by clicking on one of the following links. This will take you to a 3 for £30 page (broabband, digital TV and home phone). You will be able to add the Virgin mobile service to the bundle during the ordering process, bringing the total price up to £40 per month.