{"id":549351,"date":"2006-06-29T08:11:11","date_gmt":"2006-06-29T08:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549351-virgin-mobile-not-necessarily-cheaper.html"},"modified":"2006-06-29T08:11:11","modified_gmt":"2006-06-29T08:11:11","slug":"virgin-mobile-not-necessarily-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549351-virgin-mobile-not-necessarily-cheaper.html","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Mobile \u2018not necessarily cheaper\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

High-end users would not get a better deal by switching. Middle volume users may find some benefits, but would be loath to give up the regular handset upgrades offered by the incumbents. Low-end prepaid users should stay away, said Kaplan, which is what Virgin wants anyway. <\/font><\/p>\n

Virgin Mobile\u2019s marketing manager Trist\u00e3o Abro said its packages were clearly appealing, as it had been working flat out to sign up new users since it launched on Saturday. <\/font><\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe response has been very positive. We are ironing out the wrinkles but we are fully loaded in terms of signing up customers.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n

Virgin\u2019s VO prepaid package costs 235c a minute for the first five minutes of calls each day and 155c a minute after that. That would not appeal to most prepaid users as it costs R352 a month, which is a lot more than the average prepaid user spends, said Kaplan. <\/font><\/p>\n

Virgin\u2019s V100 competes more favourably with rival products, offering lower call fees but requiring a minimum monthly spend of R100. For a subscriber making 150 minutes of calls and sending 30 SMS messages a month, the average bill would be R310. That was 10% cheaper than rival packages. However, the rivals offered subsidised handsets worth more than the savings Virgin offered, Kaplan said. <\/font><\/p>\n

At the high end, Virgin\u2019s V500 was 4% dearer than rival packages, and again lacked the free top-of the-range handset the other operators offered. \u201cVirgin will therefore not appeal to the high-end users. I certainly won\u2019t switch,\u201d says Kaplan. <\/font><\/p>\n

Abro said he had analysed Kaplan\u2019s comments and was dismayed to find the report was based on some very flaky assumptions. <\/font><\/p>\n

The comparison had not factored in Virgin\u2019s cash-back rewards which made its high-end packages 11% cheaper \u2014 not 4% dearer, he said. That 11% saving over 24 months would buy a top-range handset, or let users upgrade their handset every eight to 12 months. <\/font><\/p>\n

Abro said Kaplan had also taken an equal weighting of peak and off peak usage, which was \u201ccompletely wrong\u201d as normal call patterns were 60% peak for mid-range users and more than 80% peak for high-end users. <\/font><\/p>\n

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The three packages devised by Virgin are not sufficient to make it a sexy alternative. Its debut \u201cwill have little impact on Vodacom and MTN,\u201d Kaplan said in a report this week. Virgin is undoubtedly a powerful brand, but will find it very tough to compete against its well established rivals, he believes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}