Amaysim: No Immediate 4G Plans, Not Worried By MVNO Collapses

In a year which has seen mobile providers Kogan Mobile, PennyTel and Red Bull Mobile disappear (and ALDI Mobile teetering on the brink), you could understand if Amaysim was a little nervous. But CEO Rolf Hansen tells Lifehacker that he’s not worried about the rationalisation in the MVNO industry — and why there are no imminent plans to add 4G to the Amaysim mix.

“We’re now in the comfortable hundreds of thousands of customers and we’re still accelerating our growth,” he told Lifehacker. “We have commercially no reason to think we are getting into any trouble, and we have a very good relationship with Optus and it is underpinned by a very solid long term contract, so nobody can mess around with our prices.”

Hansen said that when Kogan Mobile rolled out its low-priced deal, there was a temporary effect on sign-ups, but it didn’t last. “We saw a little reduction of our run rate for one or two months, and then it swang back. So for us and the market it would have been a silly move to go into a price war with negative margins.”

As a result, there are no immediate plans to change flagship Amaysim’s $39.95 offer, which includes unlimited Australian calls and texts, as well as 4GB of data. “We have stayed clear from a race to the bottom and the price points we have are every sustainable. Right now we have no reason to change those.”

Here at Lifehacker, we like Amaysim’s plans enough to recommend them as the best prepaid offering on the Optus network. But there’s one caveat: it doesn’t offer 4G. Optus has made that available through some of its other MVNO partners, but Hansen says the pricing isn’t quite yet right and he’s not sure there’s immediate demand.

“If it was that everybody wanted 4G and were the only one with 3G, we wouldn’t be seeing the stampede towards the brand,” he said. While 4G is being examined and Hansen says it will be incorporated at some point, it’s likely to be a year or two before Amaysim introduces it — something that might require a change in approach.

“4G would most likely come with some repricing. Eventually you either have to find ways to either increase the buckets or go into a tiered model, and we’re not sure what the way is. All I’m sure about is that where we sit currently is very sustainable. ”