Vodafone is using BT to provide a Vodafone branded broadband service known as Vodafone at Home, which is a contract for 18 months and will be available to its contract customers from January 8. The unlimited broadband service will cost 25 pounds ($47) per month, which is 5 pounds ($9.57) dearer than the free offering from the Carphone Warehouse Plc.
The 25 pounds ($47) monthly fee for Vodafone at Home includes line rental, which is normally 10.99 pounds ($21) per month, and uses BT’s ADSL Max product to provide broadband speeds of up to 8MBps, depending on how far away customers are from their local telephone exchange.
In addition, Vodafone at Home will include free landline calls to standard UK landlines for up to one hour per call. It is also offering a 25% discount off calls to mobile phones. In addition, it is bundling Norton Internet Security 2006 for six months and offering free 24/7 technical support.
If customers cancel their mobile phone contract, the monthly fee goes up to 35 pounds ($67) per month. This is a clear indication of Vodafone’s intention to increase customer loyalty, as it faces a highly saturated mobile market in the UK that offers limited growth potential.
Its domestic UK rivals, such as Orange, are already offering its mobile customers free broadband for 18 months for users paying more than 30 pounds ($57) per month. Telefonica’s O2 Plc is planning to launch a similar service next year.
In September Vodafone decided to rent internet access from BT Wholesale, rather than build its own broadband infrastructure. This was tied to the infrastructure-light approach of chief executive Arun Sarin.
Vodafone evaluated a number of companies and felt that BT was the best to partner with, a Vodafone spokesperson told Computer Business Review at the time. It seems that BT’s geographical reach in the UK played a large part in its winning the contract, and at the time there was little disguising the disappointment at rival telecoms group, Cable & Wireless Plc, which had been hoping to win the Vodafone contract.
We were beaten on price because we refuse to write bad deals, a C&W spokesperson told Computer Business Review two months ago.
