{"id":76980,"date":"2013-05-02T16:36:51","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T14:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=76980"},"modified":"2013-05-03T08:59:22","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T06:59:22","slug":"virgin-mobile-drops-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/76980-virgin-mobile-drops-prices.html","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Mobile drops prices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Virgin Mobile\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/227061-Virgin-Mobile\">Virgin Mobile<\/a> South Africa launched its new pre-paid price plans today (2 May 2013) called &#8220;1,2,Free&#8221;, offering subscribers every third minute, SMS, or megabyte of data free.<\/p>\n<p>Two \u201c1, 2, Free\u201d price plans are available: one focused on voice, and the other on SMS and data:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Free Talk: every third minute is free every day.<\/li>\n<li>Free Surf and Text: every third SMS and every third Megabyte is free every day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Both plans offer a per minute call rate of 99c, billed per second, while an SMS\/MMS cost 50c each, and data is billed at 99c\/megabyte.<\/p>\n<p>CEO of Virgin Mobile, <a title=\"Jonathan Marchbank\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/527202-Jonathan-Marchbank\">Jonathan Marchbank<\/a>, explained that the \u201cFree Talk\u201d plan will be Virgin Mobile\u2019s default pre-paid price plan, but that customers can change to \u201cSurf &amp; Text\u201d by dialling *110*6# from their handset.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribers can change price plans for free every 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have been waiting for the price wars to play out before announcing 1,2,Free just to see how low they would go \u2013 and then we launched a much simpler and transparent set of offers,\u201d Marchbank said.<\/p>\n<p>Marchbank explained that they were going to have the free voice, text, and data all on separate plans, but thought that would be too complicated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you know the mobile market and you\u2019re not a mathematician then this is the offer for you,\u201d Marchbank said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a promotion, it\u2019s core offer,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Asked why they didn\u2019t bundle the free minutes, texts, and data all together in one plan, Marchbank said that \u201cthe economics wouldn\u2019t work\u201d for them.<\/p>\n<p>Further questioned about why they didn\u2019t just cut their prices by a third, Marchbank said that it\u2019s to encourage people to use.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you start selling at 66c I\u2019m starting a price war I don\u2019t particularly want to,\u201d Marchbank said, adding that he doesn\u2019t want to win customers only on price, but on brand.<\/p>\n<p>Marchbank explained that if someone switches to Virgin because of the price, they\u2019re easy to lose again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen somebody makes their price 65c [per minute] I\u2019ll lose them as a customer,\u201d Marchbank said.<\/p>\n<p>He added that at a price of 66c per minute he would also make a loss on calls. \u201cI would rather make money on that call and pass on value to the customer,\u201d Marchbank said.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"related\">More mobile network and pricing articles<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/76804-cell-c-vs-8ta-cheapest-call-battle.html\"><strong>Cell C vs 8ta: cheapest call battle<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/76730-telkom-mobile-unveils-premium-voice-products.html\"><strong>Telkom Mobile unveils premium voice products<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/76274-are-you-getting-ripped-off-with-unlimited-smartphone-deals.html\"><strong>Are you getting ripped off with unlimited smartphone deals?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/76516-mtn-loses-subscribers-in-sa.html\"><strong>MTN loses subscribers in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/75515-the-truth-about-broadband-and-cellular-prices-in-sa.html\"><strong>The truth about broadband and cellular prices in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/75957-new-mtn-anytime-contracts-launched.html\"><strong>New MTN Anytime contracts launched<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New tariff plans from Virgin Mobile offers every third minute, text, or megabyte free<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":76984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,14543,1119],"class_list":["post-76980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-jonathan-marchbank","tag-virgin-mobile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76980"}],"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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76988,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76980\/revisions\/76988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}