Tuesday 25 August 2009

Short-term hire is the next MBB niche

Australia has recently been setting the standard for marketing innovation in mobile broadband and it's always worth keeping an eye on what they're doing down under. A recent development has been the launch of short-term dongle rental aimed at businesses.

The new Laptop Connect service from Telstra charges up to AUD10.95/day for 143MB (evidently based on 4GB/28 days). Charges fall depending on the duration of the rental: sub-AUD10 for anything over 5 days. Targeted segments include home-movers, business users attending events and holidaymakers.

As MBB penetration increases, subscriber growth will increasingly depend on finding niches. This looks like an attractive and high margin one, albeit a bit troublesome to manage. A lot will depend on distribution channels and ease of sign-up.

So, while their cricketers were being turned over at the Oval in the final Ashes test, they do at least have innovative MBB pricing as some compensation.

1 comment:

  1. 10 Australian dollars comes out at about £5. For a visitor to Austrlia, that might not be bad if the altrnative is paid-for wifi in hot spots. Those are the only circumstances in which I could envisage using it.

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