OTTAWA – Mobilicity is ratcheting up its marketing as it prepares to launch in three more major urban centres: Ottawa, Edmonton and Vancouver. Service in Ottawa will be available in the next few weeks with Edmonton and Vancouver later in the month. As well Calgary will go online early in 2011.
The upstart mobile carrier, currently only available in the Greater Toronto Area, recently unveiled a new marketing campaign dubbed FMyBill (it stands for Fix My Bill and can be viewed at www.facebook.com/mobilicity) to push its “unlimited everything” pricing plan in preparation for the new city launches. Doubling as a contest to win a BlackBerry 3G Curve and six months of unlimited talk, text and data service, it calls for Canadians to share their scariest cell phone bill story. Mobilicity is offering 100 of the devices to those with the best stories.
Sara Moore, VP of marketing at Mobilicity, tells Cartt.ca that FMyBill underpins everything the company stands for: simple pricing consumers understand that eliminates the cell phone bill shock. For a lot of Canadians, an unexpectedly high cell phone bill in one month could wreak havoc on household expenses, she notes.
“A study came out within the last few months that said if one paycheque was missed, the whole decks of cards would come down on them,” Moore says, noting that it’s not that different if a $250 or $300 bill arrived in the mail when the household is used to paying $50 per month. “That can be significantly damaging to a lot of families. Everything we designed was to eliminate that,” she adds.
Mobilicity’s pricing strategy is based on everything being unlimited, whether that be talk, text or data (below are details of the company’s price plans). Unlimited only applies when a customer is in one of the company’s footprints.
“The single biggest customer irritant we hear about is bill surprise,” says Mobility COO Stewart Lyons. “We’re not like Rogers’ student plan unlimited or family unlimited, which really aren’t unlimited plans. We are truly unlimited.”
This means there’s no detailed billing, showing when the call was made or for how long it lasted, he adds. “We actually don’t even keep track of it. It’s like a home phone, go nuts. If you pay for talk and text, send 10,000 text messages and make 10 hours of calls, we don’t care. It’s really unlimited.”
But to ensure simplicity and price certainty for consumers who roam out of territory, the company also has a flat rate plan and a My Wallet option that lets users store money to pay for services in these cases. For example, voice is billed at 20 cents per minute and text messages are 10 cents each when out of territory.
“You direct dial to Australia, for example, and before the phone starts to ring we come on the line and say this call costs so much per minute and you have $14.50 in your wallet, and then you can choose to let the call go through or not,” Moore explains. “You are always in control.”
Handsets key to retail strategy
While the company believes its unlimited everything prices will hit the right spot with consumers, a solid lineup of well-regarded brands of feature phones and high-end smartphones will also go a long way in driving new subscribers, says Lyon.
Mobilicity is one of two Canadian carriers to have Google’s Nexus One in its lineup (Videotron is the other). It was so popular when it went on sale, the device was sold out in 20 minutes. The company also boasts two BlackBerrys: the Bold and the 3G Curve. Lyon says the company is the only new Canadian carrier to carry the 3G Curve.
“Those devices definitely bring people to the table. You offer that and you’re in a different league than when you don’t offer it. Then on the feature phone side, it’s not so much that you’re going to bring someone in, but it’s the reliability and functionality is what people expect,” he says.
Calling a penalty on Rogers
Mobilicity maintains it wasn’t just making noise when it filed a complaint to the Competition Bureau over Rogers’ launch of Chatr, it’s anti-competitive and illegal act.
“The reason we say that is it was introduced solely for the purpose of driving us out of the market. It’s only in our markets, exactly where we launched, mimicked our price plans and at a price point with a level of advertising and distribution that we believe makes it not cost competitive. It’s a money loser for Rogers,” Lyon tells Cartt.ca. “So we’re just saying, keep it fair here. We’re all happy to compete, but let’s not try to do illegal things here. Let’s keep the playing field fair and even. It’s like hockey, call a penalty on that one.”
Ready to deal with congestion if need be
Asked whether it’s current spectrum holdings will be enough to deal with potential congestion issues resulting from its unlimited strategy (the company has 10 MHz in most markets, but has 20 MHz in southern Ontario), Lyons says the company doesn’t expect to see any issues for the foreseeable future.
“There are all kinds of things you can do to avoid congestion,” Lyon says, noting that “you can put up more towers, you can go to 6-sector sites instead of 3-sector sites, you can get more spectrum in an auction.” Congestion will also depend on the density of subscribers, he adds.
Core Price Plans
$25 unlimited talk
$35 unlimited talk, text and province-wide calling
$45 unlimited talk, text and Canada-wide calling
$55 unlimited talk, text, unlimited Canada-wide calling and US calling
$65 unlimited talk, text, Canada and US calling and unlimited data
Price Plan Add-ons
$15 text only plan
$20 for unlimited data
