Kiwi Mobile says consumers lose out under traditional charging and that its plan provides a “new level of flexibility and fairness”.
A new telecommunications company is seeking to disrupt the status quo with an innovative approach to mobile data plans after research highlighted the amount of data being paid for and then wasted.
The research* indicates more than $400 million worth of data is unused by New Zealanders each year. It calculated Kiwis on pay-monthly plans wasted an average of 6.7GB of data a month.
More than half of those surveyed (58%) said they believe they are paying for more data than they need and 68% said they want more flexibility in their mobile plans.
Kiwi Mobile, a service provided by Electric Kiwi, has launched with a market-first plan that it says saves people money without putting data limits on them.
Unlike standard pre-pay or pay monthly contracts, customers don’t have to decide in advance how much data they will use.
The Choice plan begins at $1.30 a day and provides customers with up to 5GB of max speed data.
Once this initial allocation is used up, customers can choose to continue using data at slower speeds or upgrade to a higher data tier by adjusting their daily rate for the remainder of the billing cycle.
The plan features five tiers, allowing customers to access up to 100GB of high-speed data each month, ensuring they only pay for what they use. It operates on the 2Degrees mobile network and reaches 98.5% of the places Kiwis live and work.
Chief customer officer Andy Cooper pointed to the research’s findings that inflexible data thresholds are costing Kiwis and said: “Our Choice plan will start pulling that number way down. No more paying for unused data.”
Increase transparency
Late last year, the Commerce Commission called on providers to increase transparency around pricing and coverage so consumers can make better decisions about what plan is best for them.
Kiwi Mobile says it has answered this call and intends to “bring the challenge” to other players in the market.
For example, a customer on a pay-monthly 15GB plan for $65 pays their full bill even if they used just 9GB in the month. On Kiwi Mobile, that customer would pay $44 to use 9GB.
Kiwi Mobile’s online calculator shows how much its customers will pay based on their average monthly data usage.
Cooper said: “We’ve made things flexible – you can be confident you’ll never run out of data while only paying for data as you need it.
“Our goal is that Kiwis benefit. We are incentivised to make things better and that’s exactly what we intend to do.”
This article is sponsored by Kiwi Mobile.
* The research was commissioned by Kiwi Mobile and conducted by Insight Works. It had a sample size of 1500 people.
