BT announces homeplan

BT Group PLC 29 July 2003 July 29, 2003 BT KEEPS IT IN THE FAMILY WITH BT MOBILE HOME PLAN Free calls home and family savings lead new mobile offer BT today announced full details of BT Mobile Home Plan, its new mobile service. It has specifically designed the new package around meeting the needs of the modern family by offering free calls home and cheaper packages for families who sign up together. With BT Mobile Home Plan customers won't have to pay for any calls to their home phone number which are under two minutes long. According to BT research, people phone home on average five times a week and most of those calls are for two minutes or less, making the new feature a real benefit. Customers will also get savings by signing up more than one family member at a time. BT Mobile Home Plan costs £15 a month line rental for the first mobile handset and drops to £10 a month for up to five additional handsets for any more family members in the household who sign up. Customers will be able to buy bundled, fixed price packages of call minutes which can be shared by the whole family. Fixed rate call prices mean customers know exactly how much they're paying for their service. Calls to local and national landlines will cost 10 pence a minute all day, every day. Calls to other BT Mobile Home Plan mobiles will cost exactly the same. The bill-paying parents in the household can also keep an eye on how the minutes are being spent through a usage alert service that tells them how much is being spent and by whom. A single bill will cover all the family's mobile use and mean a lot less paper and hassle all round. BT Mobile Home Plan will be available at more than 1,000 High Street branches of The Carphone Warehouse, The Link and Phones 4U by the end of October or soon after. BT has selected T-Mobile as its partner for the BT Mobile Home Plan venture. BT will act as a mobile service provider. Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, said: "We believe BT is the first company to recognise that customers are not just individuals, but parts of families. Family members who are likely to already have an existing relationship with BT can now also get all their mobiles from us on the same contract, taking the hassle out of managing different call charges and line rentals. This is a perfect solution for any modern family. "It gives parents the peace of mind which comes from knowing your son or daughter can phone home any time for free, almost regardless of how much they have used the phone that month. "Our aim is to provide simple, complete and cost effective services for all our customers whether they are at home, in the office or on the move. With our new consumer mobile service we're doing just that." Brian McBride, managing director of T-Mobile UK, said: "To achieve continued success in the UK mobile market, you have to create new ways to increase revenues and to acquire and keep the right customers. "I believe our new relationship with BT represents the best opportunities to achieve in these areas, as we combine a strong network with an outstanding consumer brand. This is a win-win situation." Looking to the future, BT is also beginning trials of a revolutionary new mobile solution. Trialists will be able to use their mobile normally when they are out and about, but when in a 'bluetooth' site, calls will be routed over the fixed network rather than the GSM mobile network. So it means customers can benefit from cheaper and clearer calls. BT has worked with Ericsson to implement an initial trial, for which Sony Ericsson will supply trial handsets. BT's roadmap for the eventual product is that it should be a truly converged communications device allowing users take advantage of Wi-Fi technology to surf the web or download files on the move. -ends- For further information: Emma Simpson/Sam Brickhill, Fishburn Hedges tel: 020 7839 4321 Mike Jarvis, BT Retail press office tel: 020 7356 6045 Jon Carter, BT Retail press office tel: 020 7356 4523 or via the BT Newsroom on its 24-hour number: tel: 020 7356 5369. Notes to editors BT Retail is one of the businesses that make up the BT Group. Others include BT Wholesale, BT Global Services, BT Openworld and Btexact. It is the UK's leading communications service provider and the prime channel to market for the other businesses in the Group. It has 21 million residential and business customers, a turnover of £13.3bn (in the last full financial year) and around 50,000 employees. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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