New player slashes calling rates

New mobile phone operator 2degrees is tackling Telecom and Vodafone head-on in the prepay phone market, offering texts and calls at half the current price.

Announcing its rates today, 2degrees said it would offer calls at 44c per minute from prepay phones to landlines and mobile phones and 9c per text.

It said Telecom and Vodafone both offered 89c per minute for calls and 20c per text.

2degrees is also offering the same rates for calls and texts to 21 other countries.

The offers will be made with no contract commitment.

There will also be rewards for top-ups, such as free texts to any mobiles and a 22c per minute charge between 2degrees mobiles, available for 30 days from the top-up.

Phone users will be able to take their numbers with them and use any other phone provided it took a sim card.

2degrees chief sales and marketing officer Larry Moore said there was plenty of room for profit, despite saying its rates were much cheaper than Telecom and Vodafone.

"I don't think we should compare ourselves necessarily to the rates in the market. We should be looking at international rates," he told NZPA.

"There's been excessive profit taking in this market by the two incumbents. Basically we've come out with simple, clear pricing, basically good value for money.

"Let's not look at what the incumbents have done for the years that they've been here, let's benchmark ourselves now against international markets." Mr Moore said 2degrees had tackled the prepay market first but there would be rollouts of other parts of the market in future.

"We believe that basically the part of the market that hasn't been given value is the prepay end of the market, so we've focused where the need is greatest to begin with. This is our first step of many," he said.

"Basically this is the biggest part of the market so we'll start here, but you'll see us move very quickly into other parts of the market, again with the same level of disruption and compelling market that we've brought to prepay."

The 2degrees launch in Auckland also previewed several advertisements featuring New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby, who played Murray in the Flight of the Conchords television series.