Australian telecom firm ComTel is making a brave move: it is launching SMSpup Mobile, a new prepaid MVNO service offering AU$130 of talk and text value for AU$29 per month but customers who agree to receive five SMS or e-mail ads per day will only be charged AU$10, a 65 percent discount. The MVNO runs on local Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) network, and follows ComTel’s integration of its pre and post-paid MVNO businesses with Empowered Communications, a local permission-based e-marketing group that it acquired in October 2007 for AU$23.7 million.
PCWorld AU: One of the catches of the new service for subscribers is that if they do not view 50 percent of the advertising messages they are sent, then SMSPup Mobile reserves the right to remove the discount.
ComTel says its service is modeled on the Blyk service launched in the UK in late 2007…which itself is in an early stage and remains to be seen it these experiments pan out.
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