Tele2 moves to data-only price plans

European telco Tele2 is looking to transition to all-data mobile plans, as consumers make more use of internet services including mobile video.

Giving a keynote talk at Mobile World Congress, Tele2 Group president and CEO Mats Granryd said that mobile pricing was moving away from pay-as-you-go to ‘bucketised’ plans and that it has already started charging solely for data in some of the 10 countries where the firm operates.

“We are gearing the company up to be solely dependent on data, so typically we give all of the voice minutes away that you would like to use, we give all the text messages away, we’re only going to charge for data,” said Granryd.

He said the trick was to realise how much data consumers use and to “move them up the bucket chain” so if they have run out of data in the middle of the month they have the option to top-up.

“Today my customer base on post-paid, more than 50% are on bucketised price-plans, and this we believe is the way forward,” said Granryd.

Stressing the importance of quality mobile connections, he added: “when you are streaming videos or TV, you cannot sit there and wait for buffering, so the qualitative aspect of the network in a data-driven world is more important now than in a voice-driven world.”

Tele2 claims to have 99.8% population coverage for its 4G offering in Sweden, 70% population coverage in Kazakhstan and is building out 4G in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands.

Though Tele2 offers combinations of fixed and mobile telephony, broadband and TV in some of its markets, Granryd said that roughly 80% of the firm’s €4 billion annual turnover is from mobile revenues.