Mobile phone group Vodafone has slashed its prepaid tariffs in a €50 million bid to seize the initiative from Meteor, the number three player which took the bulk of growth in the market last year.
With average revenue per user (ARPU) on the decline in an increasingly saturated market, Vodafone is now offering prepaid customers free texting services to other Vodafone subscribers or calls and text messages free of charge at weekends.
This scheme applies to subscribers who buy credit of €20 or more every 30 days. In addition, Vodafone introduced two new prepaid price plans with lower price evening and weekends calls and better rates for calls on the Vodafone network.
The overall plan will cost some €50 million in a full year. The group is likely to heavily promote the initiative shortly.
"This represents a complete review of Vodafone's prepay offering," said Martin Wells, interim marketing director of Vodafone Ireland.
"Our 1.6 million prepay customers are set to enjoy huge savings. Now they can choose from two simple tariffs with up to 62 per cent saving on calls guaranteed."
Vodafone said the "lifestyle" pricing option offers savings of 37 per cent on calls. The cost is 49 cent per minute to any Irish mobile or landline at peak time and 19 cent at off-peak time. Text messages cost 11 cent each.
The group said its "advantage" option offers savings of up to 62 per cent on calls on the Vodafone system.
Calls to Vodafone mobiles and landlines cost 19 cent per minute at all times and calls to other Irish mobile networks cost 49 cent. Text messages cost 11 cent.
Long dominant in the Irish mobile market, both Vodafone and its nearest rival O2 have been under increased competitive pressure as Meteor gains ground. Both Vodafone and O2 are cutting jobs.
Now controlled by Eircom, Meteor took most of the growth in the Irish market last year with the addition of more than 250,000 customers. Its subscriber base now exceeds 800,000.
The addition of 59,000 new Vodafone customers in the final quarter of 2006 brought its subscriber base to 2.18 million. But the group's monthly ARPU fell 9 per cent last year to €45.60 in December. Vodafone confirmed plans in February to lay off 100 people. It was followed by O2, which said last month that it too was seeking 100 redundancies.
