4 - 10 January 2001

Go Mobile lowers prepaid tariff to 20c

by Franco Aloisio

Go Mobile yesterday announced that it has received formal approval from the regulator to lower the peak rate on its “Ready to go” prepaid package from the present 30c per minute to 20c. As a result all outgoing calls made between 7am and 7pm will now be charged at 20c a minute.
Go Mobile had asked the regulator for a reduction of the pre-paid tariff – Ready to go – which at present is 30c per minute in peak time. He said the ultimate goal is to have a simplified tariff structure.
With a marked increase in the mobile telephony penetration rate over the past month to 28 per cent, both Go Mobile and Vodafone claim that there is still room for further expansion.
At present, there are over 100,000 sold mobile phone subscriptions in Malta. In just one month, Go Mobile attracted over 20,000 subscribers, many of them new and who previously did not own a mobile phone. On the other hand, Vodafone claims that in the last month it also increased its market share, reaching over 90,000 sold subscriptions.
Both operators admit that despite a 30 per cent reduction in tariffs, mobile charges in Malta are still more expensive than in most European countries.
According to the latest figures, Go Mobile has a 5.3 per cent market penetration. Maurice Zarb Adami, chairman of Maltacom – which wholly owns Go Mobile – expressed his satisfaction at the company’s results and said the number of lines sold to the public far exceeded the original expectations.
“Reaching such a penetration rate in one month, with only a 1.8 per cent dropped call rate shows that the Maltese public was eagerly awaiting the entry of a new, dynamic and young operator.
“Go Mobile has invested in a state-of-the-art network that has no parallels on the island,” Mr Zarb Adami said.
The company on Tuesday announced a number of new initiatives as a way of celebrating the achievements of the past month. The first one is the extension of the December 2000 promotions to January 2001.
Ready to go customers will continue paying Lm15 to connect to the prepaid system and get a Lm10 recharge voucher with a 100-day time window for a real cost of connection of Lm5.
Contract subscribers will continue benefiting from a free connection to the go mobile network throughout the month of January 2001.
This gives the contract subscriber an additional saving of Lm15 and makes the entry of new subscribers with a contract in Malta the cheapest possible.
Another initiative taken by Go Mobile was to offer single band phone owners the chance to purchase an Ericsson A2618 Ready to go package for Lm70.
Upon the presentation of their old single band phone at the customer care centre in Marsa, Go Mobile will purchase the old phone for Lm30 in cash or kind.
Go Mobile subscribers will also start benefiting from SMS services at only 2c per message, making it one of the cheapest in Europe, and no time window will apply.
Juanito Camilleri, Go Mobile’s CEO, lamented that no agreement had been reached with Vodafone over an SMS interconnection agreement between the two companies. He argued that Go Mobile’s network can handle such an interconnection, adding that Vodafone was dragging its feet.
On 15 January, Go Mobile will launch on a trial basis its information on demand service (IOD), which will give subscribers access to information on sports, news, financial stock quotes and exchange rates free of charge.
The trial will be the forerunner of the faster service that will be offered through GPRS, which will come into operation in the 2nd quarter of this year.