Vodafone is today readying itself to capitalise on Telecom's ongoing XT mobile network woes by aggressively chasing consumer and business customers.
Vodafone staff from Auckland were flown to the South Island last night to help cope with what the company expects to be an avalanche of inquiries from disgruntled Telecom customers.
Vodafone products, pricing and services general manager Kursten Shalfoon yesterday told the Otago Daily Times the company was advertising in newspapers nationally.
However, the emphasis would be on the area south of Taupo, particularly Dunedin and Christchurch; both of which had been hit hard, with four XT network outages since December.
Some outages for Telecom XT users in the South Island took days to rectify.
Telecom this week estimated it had 220,000 XT customers under contract south of Taupo.
Mr Shalfoon said there had been much discussion around whether the Telecom contracts were enforceable, because of the ongoing problems.
"We are saying they don't have to wait.
Even if some savvy customers pay the termination fees and win against Telecom later, they can keep that money and we will also pay the credit to their account."
Customers who changed to Vodafone would need to provide their Telecom bill to show they had paid the charges to receive the credit.
Customers could keep their old Telecom numbers.
Mr Shalfoon advised all changing customers to pay the termination charge to avoid getting a bad credit rating.
Vodafone embargoed the announcement until midnight, making it impossible to seek a response from Telecom.
However, the ODT understands Telecom is generally not enforcing contractual obligations with XT if the customer wants to move, although it hopes customers understand the company is on the right track with the new technology.
