VHA merges Vodafone and 3 postpaid plans, with 'unlimited' focus - UPDATED

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 09 March 2010 16:48

Your IT - Mobility

VHA, the merged Vodafone Australia and Three has taken its first step towards harmonising the current offers with the announcement of new capped voice and data plans that are common to both brands and that feature unlimited on-net calling. However the company is still do decide which brand it will carry forward long term.

Edward Goff – VHA's general manager voice and broadband, said. "We are commited to driving all three brands - Crazy Johns [in which Vodafone holds a majority stake] Three and Vodafone - forward," adding that a decision had yet to be taken on which brands would be promoted long term.

He was also non-committal about an plans to apply similar harmonisation to prepaid plans, saying only that Vodafone had made a major revamp of its prepaid offerings last August and another was likely in coming months.

VHA is putting the focus in its new plans heavily on the unlimited calling for on-net calls, (3-to-3 and Vodafone-to-Vodafone but not across networks). It has also rationalised the calling rates so that a single rate applies across all capped plans - 90 cents per minute charged by the minute with a 35 cent flagfall.

Jason Blair head of post paid consumer & micro business product management told a press briefing that unlimited calling on-3 to-3  will be available for as little as $19 per month for which users also get $70 worth of other calls, SMS, MMS etc. (however VHA press material contradicted this saying that users got only $70 worth of 3-to-3 calling and VHA has since confirmed that unlimited on-net calling 3 to 3 starts with the $29 plan)

All other plans are identical on both networks and give unlimited on-net calling. They start at $29 per month for $150 of other calls and services rising to $69 for $450 worth of calls and services.

There is also a $79 plan that gives $550 worth of calls and unlimited national SMS and MMS. The $69 plan includes 100MB of Internet data or unlimited BlackBerry email and data and 100MB of Internet data. The $79 plan includes 250MB of data or unlimited BlackBerry emails and data and 250MB of Internet data. All plans are on 24-month contracts.

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