Thursday, November 3, 2005

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Considerable price variances in UMTS bundles across Europe

London, Thursday 3rd November 2005: Tarifica’s recently launched UMTS Mobile Data Pricing Service covering 50 mobile operators, reveals that mobile operators are trying to drive usage on their UMTS networks. After spending vast sums of money on firstly acquiring licences, secondly rolling out networks and thirdly acquiring new customers, operators need to recoup their expenditure.

Taking the lowest priced UMTS bundles offered from a selection of mobile operators gives an insight into what subscribers across Western Europe can except for their money:

All prices exclude VAT

Looking at the above prices, what is on offer varies between each mobile operator as does the cost of using much more so than the other operators. The inclusive 2000 MB works out costing the customer € 0.01 per MB, which is by far the cheapest example. The nearest in terms of cheapest for the included MB allowance is T-Mobile Austria, which charges € 0.56 per MB followed by O2 Germany at € 0.83 per MB. In terms of the most expensive, SFR charges € 3.00 per MB for its ‘Bundle 5’ option with Proximus next at € 2.67 with ‘Mobile Internet 10’ followed by ‘Bundle 5’ at € 2.50 from KPN Mobile.

Outside of the inclusive MB allowance, Orange Switzerland again appears the most generous and is a clear example of a mobile operator trying to drive UMTS data usage on its network. At € 0.30 per MB, Orange is closely followed by Mobilkom which charges € 0.40 per MB, Proximus € 0.41 and SFR and Vodafone Spain both at € 1.00 per MB. The most expensive outside bundle per MB is T-Mobile UK, which charges € 3.62 per MB while KPN Mobile follows next with € 2.50 per MB. The next most expensive is E-Plus with a charge of € 1.67 per MB although the operator ranks relatively cheap in terms of the included MB price.

Tarifica’s UMTS Mobile Data Pricing further reveals the idea is to provide seamless prices between 3G and GPRS. Hence, prices for both technologies are the same with the customer dropping to GPRS access in an area that does not yet provide 3G coverage. Like with traditional voice calls, 3G pricing targets lower, medium and high users with the latter sometimes consisting of unlimited price plans. This is often referred to as an ‘all you can eat’ tariff although there are more often than not conditions to unlimited usage. For example, in Belgium, Proximus recently launched an unlimited UMTS price plan called ‘Mobile Internet No Limit’, which will be available from 2nd November 2005. Costing € 55.00 per month (excluding VAT), a monthly data limit of 1G for national usage has been set. Another example is T-Mobile Austria, with its ‘Mobile Internet’ price plan. Costing € 28.00 (excl. VAT), the unlimited amount of month data has a limit of 678 MB and if 15 per cent of the maximum is exceeded, the customer pays € 0.16 per MB.

The burning question is will the current array of UMTS tariffs/bundles encourage or deter usage based on what is being offered? Key to this is currently UMTS is being charged at the same rate as GPRS even though it offers faster data transfer speeds. Over time it is likely that operators will include more bundles at different price points and in the long term like we have seen with other technologies, the user will get more for his money in terms of Mbytes, but not necessarily pay less in recurring charges.

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About Tarifica’s new Mobile Data Pricing Service

This new service is a significant enhancement to its successful Global Mobile Tariff Service that includes postpaid and prepaid tariffs for over 200 operators in 104 countries.

The service highlights the trends in operators’ UMTS rollout strategies including volume and time based packages, EDGE or UMTS, or bundled GPRS/UMTS/WLAN. Key to their success and recouping costly licence fees, operators are projecting high adoption of these new services.

This service holds tariff information for business and residential UMTS services as well as GPRS, EDGE and WLAN. International usage is also provided. The service enables easy comparison of pricing strategies between competing operators in each country, and contains critical information for mobile operators, telecom regulators, investors and industry analysts.

Tarifica’s Mobile Data Pricing Service is available at a special launch publication rate of British Pound 2,995 for a 1 –year subscription from Tarifica.

Located in London, Tarifica is a leading brand of Access Intelligence LLC, headquartered in Rockville, Md, USA. Established in 1976, Tarifica was the first consultancy to track telecommunications tariffs, and offers a unique repertoire of tariff related products covering fixed and mobile services globally.

Access Intelligence (www.accessintel.com) is a b-to-b media and information company headquartered in Rockville, MD, serving the telecommunications, chemical, defence, satellite, aviation, cable, media and public relations markets. The Telecommunications Advisory Group includes: TelecomWeb, the telecom industry destination for comprehensive global business intelligence, which recently launched a daily news service; market intelligence provider InfoTech; tariff consultancy Tarifica; subscription news services such as Inside Digital TV and Wireless Business Forecast; and the Web-based product database TelecomTactics.

For further information or to subscribe please contact: consult@tarifica.com or +44 207 692 5292

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