View Full Version : Virgin Mobile tariffs
We all know that 'Unlimited texts' is an interest to mobile uers, Virgin Mobile are seriously missing out on this. Instead it offers bundles such as 200 texts for £10, that is equivalent to 3p per text and is technically the same as O2 £30 for unlimited texts as the calls are much more expensive too.
Therefore wouldnt this get customers joining Virgin Pay as you go?
Daily Bonus Tariff:
All calls incl 08 number: 15p per minute (This is already available)
Voicemail: Free
Texts: 10p per text (Standard rate)
Text to another Virgin Mobile: 5p (Standard rate)
Offers that should be given:
For £10 offer Unlimited texts and calls to other Virgin Mobiles
For £15 offer 500 free texts to any UK network,including unlimited texts and calls to other Virgin Mobile customers.
For £20 offer offer 500 free texts to any UK net,Unlimited calls and texts to other Virgin Mobiles but also chuck in 10MB of GPRS or £10 worth CSD WAP.
For £30 offer Unlimited texts to any net,Unlimited calls and texts to other Virgin Mobiles,100 minutes of (off-peak) calls to 15 popular international destinations and 10MB of GPRS/£10 of CSD WAP.
For £40 offer Unlimited texts to any net,Unlimited calls and texts to other Virgin Mobiles,100 minutes of (off peak) calls to 15 popular destinations,10MB of GPRS/£10 of CSD WAP and also unlimited calls to UK landlines.
If customers spend £40 or more for 3 consecutive months, then on the 4th month 200 minutes of call time to call any network should be offered as an award.
I think it would be great if they offered the above because it offers something for everyone!
And it would put O2 and Orange in the shade!
Wicked_and_Crazy
01-06-2008, 14:37
It doesnt offer anything for the occasional user
What makes you think VM want to reduce prices to attract more customers? What makes you think they can afford to? Any pricing plan changes must have to be fed into a cost model to determine if an acceptatable level of profit can be made. As you dont know the cost to VM for these services how can you go making suggestions for pricing structures??
Because customers spending £40 on services like that would still generate revenue, termination rates for text message cost less than a penny. If they are able to throw in 300 mins and 300 texts for £10 to pay monthly customers, they can afford it.
A while back there was a programme think it was on Watchdog, and they asked companies why does prepay services such as pay as you go mobiles and prepaid gas and electricity cost so much more than credit options. None of the companies gave a straight forward reason except EDF Energy, there excuse was 'Prepayment meters cost a lot more to maintain', maybe it does, but when it comes to mobiles, there isnt much maintainance.
Furthermore, many phone companies use Internet services such as Voip and sim boxes to reduce cost of termination rates ect...... Virgin are most likely to do this as Virgin Media is the main Cable internet provider but the 3rd if not the 2nd largest Internet provider as a whole in this country.
Mobile World,owned by Carphone warehouse plc who also own Opal Telecom, provide international calls from just 5p per minute, they are able to do this as they are obviously using in-house technology at Opal Telecom to route the calls.
You also mention its not suitable for the occasional user,well it is, those who put on £5 here and there would just pay the standard rates.
You also mention about having enough funds to run such a tariff, well there bank accounts probably pay them interest anyway and didnt they float on the stock exchange before NTL acquired them? They have enough money, they just need to stop wasting the money on poor marketing, I mean there sponsorship advertisements for Big Brother were terrible, no way did it encouage me to join Virgin, also Carphone Warehouse dropped out because of Big Brother's reputation with the racist comments.
A sensible way of advertising that would not cost Virgin Mobile too much money is to use Virgin Media TV channels such as Virgin1 and Trouble, and to send advertisements by mail direct to Virgin Media customers (Depending on if the customer has not opted out for marketing communication)
Sponsoring Channel 4's big brother must be very expensive and believe that they could spend the money more wisely such as looking at how introduce new products and services and to reduce costs.
Part of the problem Virgin Mobile has though, compared with other networks is that they don't own any infrastructure.
They piggyback on top of T-Mobile, which must add another layer to the cost. Can you also see T-Mobile allowing Virgin Mobile to offer better options than they do as standard?
I always thought it was the reason why Virgin Mobile can't offer an equivalent to Web'n'Walk.
T-Mobile dont really have anything to do with but lease the network to Virgin Media.
Mobile World as I said uses T-Mobile's network and Mobile World route international calls through their own infrastructure within Opal Telecom.
T-Mobile just allows Virgin and Carphone Warehouse to use their reception. Its entirely up to the virtual operator to do what they want in terms of outgoin call costs.
Virgin Mobile used to provide Mobile TV operated by BT Movio, T-Mobile didnt have anything to do with that so what makes you think T-Mobile can prevent Virgin launching something like Web and Walk???
T-Mobile generates revenue from Virgin Mobile/customers from the following:
Virgin renting the T-Mobile network
Incomming calls(termination rates)
GPRS resold by Virgin to customers
Virgin pay T-Mobile a lease which covers their share of investment for network improvements and also pays Cable and Wireless for Emergency services and International operator assistance.
Emergency services,101-Non-Emrgencies and International operator services are provided by Cable and Wireless on the T-Mobile network incl its virtual network partners and Virgin Media Cable lines.
GPRS and CSD WAP are also provided by landline companies which is why it costs a lot of money to use, its practically 3 x the cost of basic ADSL and is even more expensive than 2MB Cable Broadband
So basically, T-Mobile and all other networks is infact a virtual network itself as its basically reselling services provided by Cable and Wireless and BT.
Therefore,the most likely reason for why Virgin hasn't launched services like web and walk is because its too expensive to market and is very hard to obtain contracts with manuacturers,for example the I Phone is exclusive to O2, O2 would have paid a hell of lot to get that contract in place!
Virgin may well be concerned about new services being a failiure just like Mobile TV which was a dead loss. No wonder if BT was involved lol An idea would be for Virgin Media TV to broadcast its channels such as Living and Virgin1 direct to mobile networks so that viewer levels increase and therefore, TV advertisers would eventually have to pay more because there is a wider audience to such channels, this would certainly boost revenues for Virgin Media. Only problem is that Hutchison 3G and Orange who are the largest Mobile TV providers may well not be interested because of the competition between them and Virgin, however, Virgin could always start off Mobile TV again and make its popular channels exclusive to Virgin Mobile customers, also since Virgin Media has a good relation with the BBC, Virgin could also make BBC1,2,3 and 4 as well as BBC Parliament and News 24,Trouble,Challenge,Virgin1,Living,Living 2 all UKTV and Dave channels exclusive to Virgin Mobile customers. And something else that could be done is Movies on the move! What about if they provided Filmflex via Virgin Mobile TV, that would also be a unique selling point.
Virgin Mobile used to provide Mobile TV operated by BT Movio, T-Mobile didnt have anything to do with that so what makes you think T-Mobile can prevent Virgin launching something like Web and Walk???
because unlike Vodafone TV and TV on 3 which are IPTV services, the BT Movio service didn't run over the mobile network it was a DAB technology. So T-Mobile wouldn't have seen any increased data costs, wouldn't have to invest in new kit etc. So they couldn't object.
This was also the reason why it got cancelled. BT basically chose the wrong technology.
Europe have decided on DVB-H for mobile TV. If BT had also chose this I would expect that Virgin Mobile TV would still have been running.
If all Virgin mobile customers could have 'unlimited' mobile data, however, then T-Mobile would have to invest further in bandwidth, which I doubt they wish to do.
Well I think Virgin Mobile pay a fixed fee per month or per annum to T-Mobile for its GPRS service,so if they asked T-Mobile to increase bandwith i'm sure they will do for-at an extra cost of course.
So for example, if they increased the annual price to say £1 Million-not sure how much it really is but say £1 Million for example. if Virgin Mobile then charged like £1 per day or £3 for 5 days then that should be fine, because if 500,000 customers out of 3.5 Million customers are using GPRS everyday,then this should cover the cost and in fact go further than a break even.
For this to work, it needs to be well marketed to customers, a good way is to send a text to all Virgin Mobile customers and to customers who have ported out from Virgin Mobile to another network at attempt to bring them back onto Virgin. Another good way is to inform customers when they call 789 straight after there balances have been read out.
Its possible,but Virgin wont do this as they probably make enough money at the moment with its current rates.
However, if you call 22524 or 22525 one of them anyway, it states that they are lowering the cost by 60% around 20th June 2008! So yeah, it looks like they are making attempt at offering cheap mobile internet.
To clear this all up, Virgin Mobile does not pay anything to T-Mobile for the network use, all the network is updated and paid for by T-Mobile.
What Virgin does pay for is bundles of airtime, minutes, SMS, data from T-Mobile for an agreed price, Virgin then resell this to their customers.
Virgin Mobile have just finished and agreed terms for new data rates, you will see virgin launch a new mobile broadband product early october.
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