• silicon.com
• Technology
• Mobile

By Ben King, 8 May 2002 17:20

NEWS T-Mobile (formerly known as One2One in the UK) has sneaked a range of new charges in with its rebranding exercise in a move which could see the bills of its lightest users increase by as much as 50 per cent. Around two million T-Mobile Pay As You Go customers have been informed of the new "Everyone" tariff, which features a 30p per minute rate for users who make less than £10 of calls per month. Any new subscriber will pay the new "Everyone" rate, and existing users who spend below £4 are being forcibly moved to the new tariff. Customers who spend more than that figure are being given the option to remain on the old tariff. T-Mobile's previous tariff charged 30p per minute for the first two minutes of the day, and 5p thereafter. Assuming that half a person's calls were made at the 30p per minute rate, an individual making 50 minutes of calls a month would pay £8.75 under the old plan, but £13.33 under the new plan - 52 per cent more. On one price plan offered by the three other networks, all of whom charge 25p per minute for the first three minutes of the day and 5p per minute thereafter, a customer could expect to pay around £7.50 for the same calls (50mins/month, half the airtime at the higher rate). A T-Mobile spokesman pointed out that under the new tariff, calls to mobile networks other than T-Mobile are the same price as landline calls, rather than a flat rate of 30p per minute. However, under most reasonable usage patterns of up to three hours per month, the new prices do work out significantly more expensive. The move is clearly part of a bid by T-Mobile to get its least profitable customers to pay more or move on, and drive up its average revenue per user (ARPU), the key metric the mobile phone industry uses to calculate how much money it gets per customer. T-Mobile's ARPU was flat throughout 2001, and the group's CFO told investors last month that he expects it to remain flat throughout 2002. The moves were announced at the same time as T-Mobile's big branding jamboree, and will kick in at the beginning of June. The company also announced a number of other tariff increases, including a £3 per month surcharge for contract customers who do not pay by direct debit.