From October 1, France Telecom dropped its rates for Itineris, its Groupe Service Mobile digital cellular telephone service offering, by between 20% and 30%, to bring them more in line with other European service providers. At the same time, France Telecom announced the extension of Itineris service to other countries in Europe, additions to the Itineris network infrastructure in France and new supplementary services. Under the new tariff schedule, the monthly subscription rate will pass to the equivalent of approximately $45 from $64 for a minimum of six months, while the per-minute call rate in the Paris region will drop to about 71 cents from $0.89 cents. Call charges for the rest of France will remain unchanged at 54 cents. Alan Lenoir, director of France Telecom Mobile Radiotelephone, said the operator hopes the new tariffs will boost its subscriber sign-up rate. In Germany they are signing 50,000 subscribers per month with similar monthly rates and with connect charges that are a little higher, he said. Currently, France Telecom is signing up only an average of 5,000 new GSM users per month, he said. In total, it counts 25,000 Itineris subscribers and hopes for 50,000 by year-end and 100,000 by mid-1994. Lenoir noted that Nice and its surrounding region, in particular, have recorded an explosion in subscription sign-ups. Adding to its existing roaming accord with Deutsche Bundespost Telekom, France Telecom’s Option Europe enabled Itineris users, as of last week, to call and be called on their mobile phones while they are in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, or Scandinavia. The UK and the Netherlands will soon be added to the list, France Telecom said.
Call referral and call restriction
The extra cost of intra-European calling begins with a monthly supplement of $3.57, plus an average of 30% extra for calls made outside of France. Furthermore, an Itineris subscriber who is out of the country and receives a call from France will be charged, at the regular international rates, for the redirection of the call to the other digital cellular network. For example, an Itineris user who gets a one-minute call while in Germany will be charged $0.64 in peak hours and $0.46 in off hours. Herve Fontaine, marketing director for France Telecom Mobiles, said the surcharges (approximately 15% for each operator concerned) were necessary because the technology is not yet able to handle calls logically, independently of the distance involved. He added that the next generation of the Groupe Speciale Mobile standard under discussion would address that issue, but it will not be finished in the short term. France’s digital cellular network now covers 80% of the population, including the major axis between Lille-Paris-Lyon-Marseille-Nice and the cities of Strasbourg, Toulouse, Montpelier and Bordeaux. Lenoir noted that the company’s total digital cellular investment in 1993 is approximately $890m. The operator’s supplemental digital cellular services available October 1 include call-referral and call restriction. Call referral, which requires no supplementary monthly charge, enables all or certain calls to the digital cellular mobile phone to be sent to either a phone on the fixed network or another mobile phone. The user has four possibilities for call referral, which can be used independently of each other: systematic referral (when the user doesn’t want to receive any calls); referral for inaccessibility (when the phone is turned off or the user is outside the digital cellular network zone); referral from an occupied digital cellular line; and referral for non-response (when the party doesn’t respond after several rings). Itineris users can restrict the traffic on a digital cellular phone to: exclusively outgoing or incoming calls, exclusively incoming international calls. Each option costs an extra $3.57 per month. Lenoir said the operator has seen a stagnation in the growth of its Radiocom 2000 base, which is its old-fashiond analogue mobile phone service. For 4,000 to 5,000 new subscribers, we get about the same number of cance
llations for a net of zero, he said. Marsha Johnston
