Hutch 3G to Offer Free Line Rental to Subscribers

Hutchison 3G's UK arm has said that it will start to take pre-orders for 3G handsets from early March, with deliveries to customers due to start in mid-March. 3 UK also revealed details of tariffs and handset options which will include a free line rental option.

The company announced it will offer a price plan for customers looking for the flexibility of 'pay as you use' tariffs with no monthly line rental, in addition to offering two 'bundle' pricing options for customers looking to pay a fixed monthly cost for a large number of voice calls, video calls, multimedia downloads and multimedia messaging.

All of 3's price plans are based on a simple and transparent event-based charging system linking payment to specific items of content downloaded by the customer - in contrast to existing mobile data services where access is charged by the megabyte. Additionally there are no complex peak and off-peak charges: voice and video calls are billed according to fixed tariffs, regardless of the time of day or day of the week

3 UK Managing Director Colin Tucker said: "We are looking forward to bringing 3's unique products and services to the UK market. 3 will bring about a fundamental shift in the mobile communications landscape. We are offering consumers the kind of services that were in the realm of science fiction just a few years ago - but at pricing which is highly competitive with existing mobile voice and text services. This is an incredibly exciting time for all of us at 3 as our vision finally begins to become reality."

3 also announced that the first 20,000 customers to register on either the Kit On 3 price plan or the Caboodle On 3 price plan before 31st March 2003 will be eligible for a 50% discount off the RRP of any handset. Handset prices are expected to begin at US$650."

Posted to the site on 10th February 2003