May 09
1
3 Mobile Free Calls for Life
I’m sitting here in Sydney Australia looking at my newest
acquisition.
My £49.95 Skype phone from 3. And I’m fuming. Yep – you cant buy this phone in Australia yet
and if the Vodafone takeover obtains ACCC approval – probably never.
I’m fuming because the latest and greatest gadget ever
released on the worldwide “must-have” gadget stage doesn’t work in Australia.
Hey Koltai – if you think the latest and greatest is a Skype
phone – boy are you behind the times.
Well, this is where I get to teach you a little something
about technology.
Most Skype users accept the degraded quality of Skype voip
as a cost of using the network for free.
But English company 3, have reversed the technology so that
when a call is placed via Skype – the initial outbound and return path is via
GSM for free. So users get the benefit of the GSM voice quality without paying
for the GSM carriage – ok, ok, they only get 3,000 minutes per month free.
But how can 3 do that?
Well if you own the network and are treated by fellow
network operators like the poor cousins – then you have to do something to
disrupt their dominance.
You have to steal their customers.
What better way to steal the customers than offer customers
free calls for life?
In the UK,
consumers are lining up at 3 shops to buy their ‘Skype for life’ phones which
they can buy for £39.95. The 3 free-calls sim pack comes in at another £9.99. (A once only up front cost – nothing
to pay ever again. No network charges, no roaming, no monthly, no annual,
nothing.)
So how are they going to make money?
3 has an “upgrade” plan. They figure that people don’t want
to carry around two or three
phones;
One for internet, one for cheap calls and one for Skype, so
they introduced the Skype upgrade option.
3 Internet is called xseries
and you can get unlimited internet for only £5.00 per month.
That gets rid of one of the three handsets.
So now all we need is cheap calls – and of course, for
another £10.00 per month, 3 will give you 75 minutes per month of GSM calls.
So for £15.00 you get……
75 minutes GSM quality calls both ways
Unlimited Internet access (which you can connect to your PC as well)
3,000 minutes of skype with GSM quality to the skype switch.
What could be better than that?
Well, 3 could buy Skype – and Ebay would be grateful.
3 could enter the US market – (why do you think they’re
buying Skype?)
And 3 could introduce the Facebook, Myspace Bebo and Twitter
phone….. oh, they already did
that.
The combined user base of 3 users worldwide and Skype users
worldwide exceeds the numbers of eyes on Facebook or Myspace. It’s unlikely that 3 wont get the funding
required to get this deal away – real smart – although next week’s market check
might lead to a few heart palpitations.
We at Perceptric believe that disruptive capable service
offerings are integral to a company’s bottom line.
This week the award for most innovative disruption
implementation goes to 3 UK.
This has been an unpaid advertisement
for 3 UK – and if you wanna pay me – please, please, please – (you cant see me, but I’m on both knees
groveling…) bring the service to Australia.
Thank-you…… and… if I have any wishes left – scratch that Vodaphone à 3
Australian takeover thingy – not a good idea……. Less competition – higher prices
(very un-3 like.).