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To: Voltaire who wrote (46581)10/29/1999 9:38:00 PM
From: puborectalis  Respond to of 152472
 
Phone mania........Business: The Economy

Mobile sold every two
seconds

One in three people in the UK now has a mobile phone

The four UK mobile phone firms have been warned to put
improved plans in place to deal with the expected
Christmas rush for their products.

David Edmonds, director general of the industry regulator
Oftel, is concerned that they will not be able to cope with
connecting the anticipated large number of new phones
to the networks.

It follows the long delays in
getting connected seen last
Christmas and in August this
year following a rush sparked
by a supermarket price war.

Mr Edmonds said: "I want to
know how they have
estimated demand for
registrations and credit
top-ups during the Christmas
period and what they will do
to ensure customers will not
experience problems."

He said forecasts are for more than 3.5 million pre-pay
phones to be sold between now and Christmas, more
than double the record sales achieved in the same
period last year.

Numbers have doubled

That figure equates to 63,000 phones sold each day - or
roughly one every two seconds between the end of
October and 25 December.

Mr Edmonds said that last year pre-pay phones were
the Christmas present.

He added: "This year it is predicted that in excess of 3.5
million pre-pay phones will be sold ... more than double
the record sales achieved in the same period last year."

Mr Edmonds said the service for switching on pre-pay
mobile phones to the networks had been far from
satisfactory in the past when companies had been
unable to cope with demand at peak times.

Thousands of customers were unable to use their
Christmas present for weeks last year while in August,
following a supermarket price war on pre-pay phones,
companies once again failed to meet demand.

Pre-pay boom

Oftel received more than 600 complaints in August alone
as customers found phone helplines jammed.

There has been an explosion in the ownership of mobile
phones in the UK in the past two years.

The rate of sales has risen dramatically since the launch
of pre-pay phones.

Customers put off by the complicated array of different
tariff packages available have warmed to the simplicity of
the pre-pay system.

It involves customers paying to buy a handset and then
buying airtime 'vouchers' as they go.

By September this year there were 19.5 million mobile
phones in circulation in the UK with an estimated 1.8
million of these on pre-pay packages.

In the past year alone nine million mobile phones have
been sold.




To: Voltaire who wrote (46581)10/29/1999 9:48:00 PM
From: JohnG  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 152472
 
Voltaire. I have folllowed your conspiracy theory and often wondered if, at sometime in your career, you had some inside view of MM's and large houses operating to affect stock price and market movement in a way that benefited their interest.
JohnG



To: Voltaire who wrote (46581)10/29/1999 9:54:00 PM
From: JohnG  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 152472
 
Stephen. Now that we have internet phones, all of those phones in servive are as obsolete as a 386 PC and will need to bew replaced over the next couple of years. Thus we have both demand from new users and from old users upgradeing so they can use the net. Can you spell EXPLOSIVE!!
John