Virgin hails 'free' landline-to-mobe calls

[mobaholic]

Virgin Media is to offer customers free calls from their Virgin landlines to their Virgin mobile phones.  As always, strings are attached.

Strictly free calls are reserved for the upcoming weekend-only 'Size M' plan.  Add weekday evenings into the mix for 'Size L' and you pay £3.45 a month.  For the 24/7 'Size XL' tariff you pay £7.95.  Line rental for all three tariffs is £11.99 a month.

Not so much free, more certainty of charges - and reasonable charges, at that.  This plays well to consumer psychology, accustomed as we all are to the outrageous prices that operators dream up when we call mobile phones from our landlines.  UK landline-to-mobile call traffic drums up £1.6bn a year in operator revenues, according to Virgin, which presumably picks up a pleasing chunk of this.  So why should it torpedo such a nice not so little earner?

The answer lies in Virgin's ambitions to build a quad play UK telco, straddling TV, cable and ADSL broadband, mobile and fixed telephony. The company may lose a little in individual elements of the bundle but it makes much more money in the long run: people who choose all four services are very profitable and less susceptible, we suspect, to "churning" than single-service rates tarts.

Virgin's recruiting sergeants have some work to do: the company has half a million, quad-play customers, compared with more than four million home phone customers and 10 million customers in total.

Source:-   TheRegister.

Virgin Mobile Press release.

[BJ]

Pity that VM dont know what their talking about.

This statement in their press release is incorrect.

"Launching on 1st April, Virgin Media will become the first phone provider in the UK to offer new and existing customers free home phone to mobile calls" 

Post Office Homephone have been offering free home phone to mobile calls at weekends for sometime now.

VM line rental is currently £11 so it looks like this increases to £11.99.

Their normal  call charges particularly to NGN numbers are a rip off.

[delaro]

don't forget about orange packages that have been on market for years allowing to call orange mobiles free of charge..

[BJ]

don't forget about orange packages that have been on market for years allowing to call orange mobiles free of charge..

Orange Homephone Customers have to pay to call Orange Mobile Customers. I guess  your talking about the Orange (Second Line) their Voip service.

Its worth noting that only calls to active Virgin Mobile Numbers will be inclusive/free.

"Calls to "active" Virgin Mobile numbers are free. As with your landline calls, re-dial before 60 mins to avoid call charges. To be "active", the Virgin Mobile number called must have originated a chargeable outbound event (call, sms , data session) within the previous 90 days. Remember that if you call a Virgin Mobile number that is roaming overseas, that number will still be charged any applicable roaming tariff, even though your part of the call may be free."

http://www.virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia/price-changes.php

[mobaholic]

Pity that VM dont know what their talking about.

This statement in their press release is incorrect.

"Launching on 1st April, Virgin Media will become the first phone provider in the UK to offer new and existing customers free home phone to mobile calls" 

Post Office Homephone have been offering free home phone to mobile calls at weekends for sometime now.

VM line rental is currently £11 so it looks like this increases to £11.99.

Their normal  call charges particularly to NGN numbers are a rip off.

All good points: thanks BJ.