Pre-paid Mobiles Foot The Bill For Majority
The Age
Tuesday May 22, 2007
AUSTRALIANS might be big spenders with high credit card debts, but when it comes to mobile phone bills they exhibit caution.
A Telstra report issued yesterday says that more than half of all Australian mobile phone accounts are now pre-paid, partly because consumers are wary of nasty surprises when their bills arrive.Figures from the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association show that of the 19.3 million mobile phones in Australia, 9.7 million are on pre-paid accounts.Industry figures show that the shared Optus/Vodafone 3G network added 60,000 subscribers in the first quarter of this year, mainly as users upgraded from the 2G network, and of that total only 1000 were post-paid.Telstra's NextG had more than 400,000 customers at the end of February and is said to be adding subscribers at the rate of 100,000 a month, mainly by migration from the fading CDMA network and from 2G. The move to pre-paid on Next G is expected to increase the flow.Pushing the trend, carriers are now offering pre-paid users higher-quality handsets with functions comparable with more expensive post-paid phones.Telstra this week introduced pre-paid to its high-speed Next G network.Two handsets, costing less than $300, are on offer, giving users what Telstra calls "cost-controlled access" to the 3G speeds of the Next G network, video calling, music, the internet and 16 channels of Foxtel news, sport and other material.Simultaneously, Telstra has stopped selling handsets for the CDMA network that was built seven years ago, mainly to cover rural users unable to reach the 2G GSM networks that still carry most mobile traffic in the main cities and principal regional centres. The CDMA network will be closed in January.In February, Telstra said it had connected more than 400,000 customers to Next G in its first four months of operation.LINKS? www.atug.com.au? www.amta.org.au
© 2007 The Age
