Telecom New Zealand Mobile Data Usage Jumps After Cuts to Roaming Costs

Published on: 8th Feb 2013

­Telecom New Zealand says that its new international data roaming pricing is resonating strongly with Kiwi travellers with a significant spike in overall roaming and data usage following the company's introduction of new pricing late last year.

The new pricing features flat rates for data roaming in the top travel destinations (accounting for 90% of Telecom's total data roaming traffic) and significant pricing reductions in all other markets.

The objective of the new pricing was to provide greater certainty and simplicity for customers, allowing them to access and use mobile data on their smartphones and tablets as they would when in New Zealand. The flat rates are $6 per day for Australia and $10 per day in other key markets including the USA, UK and China.

"Our new pricing was launched just a few days before Christmas but we've already seen a marked change in how customers use their smartphones when overseas," says Telecom CEO Simon Moutter.

During January, Telecom customer data roaming usage (in terms of total megabytes consumed) was up 174% for Australia, and up 193% in the $10 per day markets compared with January 2012.

"This is a significant spike in data consumption from previous growth trends," says Mr Moutter. "For example, in November 2012, the month before our new pricing came into effect, year-on-year data roaming growth was tracking at 6% for Australia and 26% for the $10 a day markets.

"Not only are we now seeing fantastic year-on-year growth, data usage continued to increase as we entered the holiday period - reversing the usual declining trend due to reduced business usage and corporate travel.

"We took a punt with introducing our new flat rates in the hope that the certainty and simplicity they offered would encourage our customers to make full use of their smartphones while roaming overseas. Previously our research showed that many people switched off their data roaming function, or used data extremely sparingly, because they were unsure of what they would find on their phone bill when they returned home," continues Mr Moutter.

 

Tags: [telecom new zealand]  [New Zealand]