Orange lures in 3G custom with "Try Before you Buy"
Orange could well be rueing its late entry into the 3G sphere, since 3 and now Vodafone have had the benefit of a head start. The company’s planning on catching up, however, by offering some tempting deals including a test drive service that lets you try kit out before committing to a purchase. Three different initiatives are being launched: buy one get one free, Try 3G and Test Drive.
The buy one get one free tariff is designed to appeal to couples (and there are also a number of buy one get one free on 3G handsets), while Test Drive lets you play around with the 3G phones and services for a week. It’s not actually a completely free service – customers will have to pay a deposit for the phone and £4 to access 4mb of data and 15 minutes of video calls. After that, you’ll have to pay for any additional voice calls or downloads.
Try 3G is an attempt to get those already coverted to 3G to use the 3G services. Sign up for a 12-month contract and you get 3 months’ free data up to 1000Mb; 30 minutes of free video calls to UK phone; and three music track downloads. Finally, Orange also annouced an agreement with Wanadoo that would see a 3G WiFi datacard arriving in coming months.
