Monthly Main Meeting Highlights
July 2011 Main Meeting
Tonight Amaysim called in to show off their new mobile phone company.
Rolf Hansen the CEO and founder of Amaysim, gave us a detailed account of the company.
Rolf was one of the founders of Simyo. This was one of the first companies to establish the concept of no frills mobile phone costing. They did not sell phones and had no contracts, just the simple concept of low cost pay as you use. The concept and the company was so successful it was sold to Royal KPN, the Dutch equivalent of Telstra.
Rolf said that rather than retire to a beach he decided to bring the concept to Australia, so the beach came free. So, what is Amaysim?
It is the same proven concept Rolf used in Europe applied here. That is a no frills basic, single cost phone access.
The company was launched in November 2010. Amaysim runs on the Optus 3G network and has about 80 staff with an Australian -based call centre.
The basic cost model works like this;
15 cent per minute cost to any phone; mobile or land line on any network.
No flag fall.
12 cents per standard SMS
5 cents per megabyte of data,
and no contracts!
Now there are some exceptions! Time is charged in minute increments and data
is charged in 1 MB segments.
Service calls, that is 1300, 1500 and 1800 numbers are charged at 29 cents per
minute. The service numbers are the biggest worry as more and more companies
are using them. You always get in a queue and the calls are inevitably long.
Payment can be prepaid or post paid. You can pay online or simply purchase credit from any of the 14000 dealers across the country. Your credit lasts for 90 days.
This month Rolf announced the launch of the Amaysim Unlimited plan and Rolf assured us that it is truly unlimited. For $39.95 per month, you get unlimited phone calls, to any phone, anywhere in Australia (again with the exclusion of those service numbers), as well as unlimited text and 4 GB of data.
As there are no contracts, so at the end of the month if you decide to drop
out or go back to the per call cost system you can.
Rolf compared the cap plans to the Amaysim pricing and demonstrated how the
Cap deal was only good if your usage was constrained. Generally, most people
would either go, over the cap, or significantly under it. In that case it is
the phone company that makes a packet out of your “phone package”.
He also highlighted that the cost of the phone which is included in most contracts was significantly higher because of the large amount of interest paid over the term of the contract.
Here are a few comparisons.
Vodafone $29 cap plan
$ 29 per month for $180 Value 200 MB of data and UNLIMITED Vodafone to Vodafone & 3 voice calls. Call costs are 98c per minute with a 38c flagfall
Vodafone appear to be the only company to have an unlimited plan starting at $45 per month, it’s called Infinite.
The Optus $29 cap
$ 29 per month for $180 Value 200 MB of data and unlimited mobile access within Australia to Facebook®, Twitter®, LinkedIn, MySpace, eBay and Foursquare.
Call costs are 90c per minute with a 35c flagfall.
The Telstra Freedom plan
and Telstra have a Freedom plan starting at $49 per month with $550 of unlimited
calls and
text to standard Australian numbers and 1.5GB of data.
Call costs are 90¢ per minute plus 35¢ call connection fee.
Pay as you go
The comparisons for pay as you go look good too.
Vodafone prepaid charges appear to average 39c per 30 seconds and 35c flag fall.
Optus charges 89c per min and 39c flagfall.
Telstra rates go down with the increase in the credit paid, starting at 50c per 30 sec, for a $10 credit. The flag fall is 27c.
Access times vary a lot between the companies.
Vodafone offer a 365 day access on prepaid.
Vodafone also offer “free time Vodafone to Vodafone”. $30 buys 150 minutes of
free time. By my calculation that's 20c per minute.
Optus has a 186 day option (six months access).
Telstra, under their prepaid offers, has “Telstra Long Life” (see bottom of chart on the link). This appears to grant access up to a period of a year dependant of the amount you recharge.
With Amaysim you get 90 days access.
These figures are taken from the pages quoted and the comparisons are not complete. You should check out the sites and offers for yourself.
Check out the Amaysim web site for all the details.
THE RAFFLE
Rolf offered two Amaysim sim cards with the new Unlimited offer for 30 days.
winners were
James Hill and his partner
And Steve South
The Luck door prize went to
Peter Collard
