14 DAY TRIAL // Carphone Warehouse, one of Europe's leading mobile phone retailers, recently launched its own mobile phone service called Talkmobile. Running the service as a mobile virtual network operator, Carphone agreed with Vodafone to rent and use a portion of its network.
Talkmobile is announced to be different from other existing services by offering subscribers contracts that can be signed for only a nine month period. We don't see this too often, as most phone operators have contracts that force customers to sign for at least one or two whole years. Of course, Talkmobile will also offer, besides the nine-month contract, contracts for 12 or 18 months.
Talkmobile offers consumers the possibility to get 50 free voice minutes as well as 50 free text messages for only ?12 a month. GPRS service is included, at ?7 per MB as well as MMS service, at ?0.35 per message. Among the phones available via Talkmobile we have for now the Nokia 6300 (in white version too), several Motorola models, LG Chocolate in different colors, Samsung models, including the C300 with its pink version, and the Sony Ericsson W2001 music phone. Quite a diversified offer, which will most probably grow as time passes.
Carphone also brings the Take5 promotion: talk for 5 minutes and you can talk the next 5 minutes for free, everyday. Also, if you send 5 text messages, you can send another 5 messages with no charge.
Carphone already provides the Fresh Mobile pay as you go service, via a deal with T-Mobile, service that has very low rates for UK calls: ?0.15 per minute for calls to any network, any time.
Mobile World is the other pay as you go service from Carphone, providing extremely low call charges for international calls. For example, a call to USA is charged at only ?0.05 per minute and a call to Australia is ?0.06 per minute.