Vodafone SIMple vs Digital Island SIMple
Vodafone New Zealand has announced a new set of mobile plans called "SIMple"... These are basically a no long term on account plan. The company is trying to get to those users who don't care for a handset subsidy and care even less for a long term "partnership", but don't want prepay (for many reasons, perhaps even the need of invoices, complete activity lists, etc):
Digital Island is a MVNO that resells Telecom New Zealand XT mobile services. Clearly they don't have a "SIMple" plan, but they do have a SIMple logo:
Coincidence? According to Digital Island's Blair Stewart "Digital Island's design agency created the SIMple concept in early May and we added it to our website later the same month. Vodafone launched SIMple on their website in August."
Thanks to regs for the tip in our forums.
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Comment by Behodar, on 10-Aug-2010 15:21
I'm not absolutely certain but I think my launch-day XT SIM package contains the word "SIMple" too. And if I recall correctly, I think I saw "SIMplicity" on O2 when I was in the UK. Apparently all of the operators are jumping on the bandwagon! :)
Comment by Peeyoosh Chandra, on 18-Aug-2010 08:47
Adding to that,
SIMple the design and concept was used by Three in Australia 18 months ago - and is still in use today.
It may be that because Vodafone now owns Three they can use it (in Australia).
PC
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Comment by nic.wise, on 9-Aug-2010 20:57
On the VF plans:
Nice to see them catch up to where the UK (including VFUK) was, oh, 36 months ago.
Also nice to see that the only data you can get with them is the included 100MB plan. No "upsell" to get 500MB or a few GB.
As usual with VFNZ, it's a half full solution. I've given up on them, to be honest.
Nice reuse of someone else's name tho. DI aren't really _using_ the name, however.