I stumbled upon this article today that compares the prepaid mobile market in Australia with that on offer in New Zealand. Seems that the level of competition is far superior in Australia as is the prepaid mobile pricig on offer. There are 2 key players in the NZ market, Vodafone and NZ Telecom. Both offer pretty much the same rates, except one charges by the minute whilst Vodafone charges by the second. This week 2Degrees launched their prepaid mobile offering. They have spent some $250m creating their own network. Pricing is very good. Not many bells and whistles. You can found out more about 2 Degrees here.
For a low level user, the cheapest Australian plan (from Vodafone) costs the user only $18.64 a month, around half the price of the least expensive New Zealand plan, also from Vodafone, which comes in at $37.13 per month. For a high volume user the difference in prices is even more extreme, with the cheapest Australian plan costing $52.77 per month, compared to the cheapest New Zealand plan at $188.32 – over three and a half times more expensive.
The cheapest plans for each operator, and the resulting monthly spend for a low user (one who makes 30 calls and sends 33 text messages per month), for 2006 to 2008 is illustrated in Exhibit 1. We have included the 3G operator 3 in our 2008 analysis, now that 3G services are being offered through prepay on other operators also.
Exhibit 1: Monthly spend for a low prepaid user from 2006 to 2008 [Source: Network Strategies]
Exhibit 1: Monthly spend for a low prepaid user from 2006 to 2008A similar comparison of monthly spending is given in Exhibit 2, but this time for a high user (someone who makes 140 calls and sends 55 text messages per month).
Exhibit 2: Monthly spend for a high prepaid user from 2006 to 2008 [Source: Network Strategies]
Exhibit 2: monthly spend for a high prepaid user from 2006 to 2008Comparing the variation in the monthly cost of prepaid plans between 2007 and 2008 shows that for the high volume user Telstra has become more expensive in the last year due to the removal of its prepaid cap plan. Otherwise both the above graphs indicate that very little has changed in the last year in terms of monthly spends, for these usage levels (which are based on the OECD baskets of mobile usage). Herein lies the problem: these standard baskets are reaching the limit of their usefulness for undertaking thorough consumer comparisons of mobile prepaid plans, due to the continually evolving characteristics of these plans.
So what is changing that we can’t quantitatively analyse with the OECD usage baskets? The major theme that we have noticed is the rise of the nominated numbers. This enables you to nominate certain numbers to become your “friends” list, for which there are special rates for calling or texting. Variations on the nominated number theme are offered by three of the five operators that we studied, and the way they are implemented are so diverse that it is especially difficult to compare the value offered by each. This can be seen in our attempt to summarise the various offerings below in Exhibit 3 (note all prices have been converted to New Zealand dollars and rounded to the nearest dollar).
