Easymobile offers cheap, no-frills service

T-Mobile UK and Danish telecom company TDC are co-operating to offer a low-price, no-frills mobile phone service in the UK to be called easyMobile.

From March 2005 easyMobile will offer a web-based telephony service where customers can buy a prepaid Simcard for their existing handheld and manage their accounts online.

TDC has had some success with a similar service in Denmark which claimed 10% of the market within four years of launching.

The company has licensed the easyMobile brand from easyGroup for use in up to 12 European countries. It will use T-Mobile's network infrastructure to test the UK market. Frank Rasmussen, founder of the successful Danish service, will be as chief executive of the new business.

EasyMobile offers voice and SMS services and will be available for all mobile customers who use second-generation handsets. Prices are expected to be lower than those offered by the UK's major mobile providers.

Analysts at Ovum predict that the easyMobile service could lead to an overall reduction in UK mobile tariffs.

Scarlet Pruitt writes for IDG News Service