Kiwis getting better mobile phone deals

Photo / Steven McNicholl

Kiwis are getting a better deal on their mobile bills just seven months after the Commerce Commission moved to slash mobile termination rates in a bid to address competition in the wholesale mobile market.

The findings are contained in the Commerce Commission's second mobile monitoring report which looked at the price customers pay to call a mobile on the same network (on-net) versus what they pay to call someone on a rival network (off-net).

The commission cut mobile termination rates - the fees telecommunications companies charge one another for a call or text message originating from a rival network - in half in May, from 14c to about 7c a minute.

The Commerce Commission said mobile users were beginning to benefit from the cuts, with the average cost of calls within networks and between networks narrowing between August and October this year.

Traffic between mobile networks increased during the same period, the commission said.

The commission said that between August and October there had been a 2.6 per cent fall in the price gap between on-net and off-net calls and a 5.5 per cent drop for text messages.

At the same time cross network traffic had increased by 0.8 per cent for mobile calls and 3.2 per cent for text messages.

"The introduction of less restrictive plans, and the continuing fall in the difference between on-net and off-net prices, have resulted in increasing cross-network traffic for calls and texts," telecommunications commission Dr Ross Patterson said.

"The commission expects the on-net discount to continue to fall. These changes lessen the barriers to switching mobile providers, so consumers should no longer be discouraged from changing networks."