Mercury Communications Ltd and US West Inc duly launched their One-2-One mobile phone system yesterday, with a tariff structure that includes free local calls at off-peak periods. Cable & Wireless Plc chairman Lord Young said Our real target is BT, and promised competition with a vengeance. The digital cellular service is initially limited to the M25 area, but Lord Young said it will cover all major population centres within 30 months. Richard Goswell, One-2-Ones’s managing director said that new base station technology from Northern Telecom Ltd’s joint vneture with Matra Communication SA will double signal propogation and will consequently halve the base-station density for the next phase of expansion, bringing the network in line with more conventional cellular systems. Two tariff rates will be offered: BusinessCall is available for a UKP20 connection and UKP20 monthly charge with calls costing 16 pence per minute peak and 8 pence per minute off-peak – calls between the mobiles will cost 8 pence at any time. The PersonalCall Tariff also has the UKP20 connection cost, but monthly charges drop to UKP12.50. Peak calls are 25 pence per minute and off-peak national calls cost 10 pence per minute. Off-peak local calls are free. In addition, calls made to the mobile from British Telecommunications Plc or Mercury phones will be charged at the ‘D’ rate, making them between 50% and 60% cheaper for incoming callers. Two phones will initially be available, the M200 from Siemens AG will cost UKP250 and the M300 flip-open from Motorola Inc is UKP300. A third, the One-2-One M300 is due before the end of the year from an un-named manufacturer and will also cost UKP250. All of the phones come with Smart Cards that hold the customer’s account details and personal encryption key – it will also hold up to 99 phone numbers. Users will be able to sign up for the phone and service through a number of channels including high street retailers Dixons, Currys and Tandy. Most of the home counties, stretching north past Milton Keynes and Letchworth and west to Reading and Basingstoke should be covered by next spring.
