Woolworths pleased with telco

AAP

SUPERMARKET giant Woolworths Ltd says its foray into the telecommunications market is proving successful with parents and kids looking for non-nonsense plans.

Woolworths Everyday Mobile was launched in August 2009 and offers $2 SIM cards, unlocked mobile phone handsets and pre-paid plans for sale in its supermarkets, Big W stores and other outlets.

Everyday Mobile head Graeme Veitch said on Monday the first seven months of operation had been successful, with a strong take-up from parents and their young children.

"We've been delighted, the initial plan that we launched in August has been very successful and we were ahead of target at the first half," he told AAP.

"We're very happy with what mobile is doing for us and I'd expect it will only get bigger and grow a lot more from here."

Everyday Mobile launched with a Simple Saver pre-paid plan, which offers a flat rate for voice calls of a 15 cent connection and 15 cents for every 30 seconds of conversation to both mobiles and fixed-lines.

Text messages cost 15 cents each.

Aiming to extend on its early performance, Everyday Mobile has launched a new pre-paid product called Chatterbox, which provides bonus talk and text credit for monthly recharges of $20, $30 and $50.

"It does appeal to someone who uses their mobile quite differently, that means it will be different customers. But still these are typical Woolworths' shoppers," Mr Veitch said.

"While the Simple Saver perhaps is really popular with your very young kids, the chatterbox will probably be more interesting to your slightly older teenagers, who probably send a lot of text messages and call a lot in the evenings."

Woolworths will continue to seek customer feedback and plans to launch more new products in the future, he said.

Its network access relationship with Australia's number two telco Optus has been positive and remains strong, Mr Veitch said.