liveconnected.ME

Posted on 13th Mar 2010 @ 8:33 PM

 March 2010

Phone Ads to Drive Mobile Costs Down

New Australian Telco – Live Connected

www.liveconnected.com.au

It’s time we made room for an idealist in the mobile phone market, according to the CEO of a newly launched Australian telco, Live Connected.

Roshan Mahanama, founder and CEO of Live Connected, says Australians are paying the highest mobile phone bills in the developed world. “Something had to give and Live Connected hopes to challenge the big guys and start a revolution,” says Mahanama.

So, what will the telco revolution look like? According to Mahanama, “It’s a business committed to bringing mobile bills right down, while still offering high level customer service and extensive network coverage.” And it’s contract-free and call-centre free. How is this possible? Live Connected will be advertising-funded and offers highly responsive, online-only, seven-day-a-week customer service.

And in a move that Mahanama hopes will endear him to 3 users, who are attracted to the low caps, but frequently end up on the expensive roaming service, Live Connected operates on the extensive Optus Mobile Digital Network.

Mahanama, himself an Optus ex-employee, knew there had to be a way to bring mobile costs down. And he thinks he’s found it. Inspired by Google and Facebook, Live Connected will be partly funded by advertising. Customers will enjoy low phone rates by agreeing to receive up to six SMS or MMS advertisements each day. The ads will come directly from Live Connected, and Mahanama stresses that customer details will not be shared with advertisers.

Live Connected offers a further challenge to the establishment – it’s contract-free.  “We prefer to think our customers will stay because they like us, rather than locking them into long contracts with punitive exit fees,” says Mahanama. “Telco’s are fond of saying they are customer focused, whereas Live Connected will completely depend on customers having a great experience,” he adds.

Live Connected has been quietly trialling since December, and if feedback emails; discussions on Whirlpool (Australia’s hard hitting telco chat site) and comments on Facebook are anything to go by, the people are happy. It seems they especially love a call-centre free telco; with one user describing the service as ‘legendary’ and another boasting of a 3am reply. 

While 3am is out of Live Connected’s normal hours of service, Mahanama says being a next generation telco definitely means being post-call centres. “Call centres have reached their use-by date. When did you last feel satisfied after contacting a telco call centre? We do all our customer contact online using email and Twitter. It doesn’t just make the service cheaper, we think it works better.”  

Most customers receive replies to emails within two hours (the service promises six hours maximum), with the majority of cases taking only minutes to resolve. Live Connected also communicates promotions and news via Twitter and Facebook. “Word of mouth or ‘word of web’ is everything now. Our customers receive discounts for referring friends and they use social media to make the referrals.”

Live Connected is boasting the lowest entry level costs of any Australian telco. Presently, customers choose between $10 and $20 caps; known as Apollo 10 and Apollo 20, giving $120 and $300 worth of calls and texts and 200MB and 300MB of downloads respectively. Early-birds were treated to the Apollo 5; a $5 cap, offering $100 of calls and texts.  “We love the way social media is contributing to our business. It lets us talk to our customers and has even got them talking to each other.”

Roshan Mahanama is available for interview ex Sydney and Melbourne. Follow Live Connected on Twitter or visit them at Facebook.

Media please contact Katie McMurray, KatieMac Publicity,

0422 590 321; 02 9387 8285, katiemacpr@bigpond.com