Easymobile Denies Flop Jibes

Europe : EasyMobile has rejected reports that the discount mobile telephone outfit is a flop. When it launched in March it claimed to have sparked a "mobile war" in the UK amid claims that this new cut price approach would shake-up the sector.

However, far from being a threat to the established mobile phone industry, The Telegraph reports that the Stelios-backed business has failed to take off and only signed up 5,000 punters in the two months since its launch.

But speaking to The Register, easyMobile boss Frank Rasmussen dissed the report insisting that the numbers quoted were "not correct". He declined to say exactly how many punters easyMobile had attracted so far except to say that it was "more than 5,000".

And since the company has only been marketing the business for the last two weeks (March was just a "soft launch" apparently), Rasmussen added it was "a little too soon [for others] to judge".

Indeed, plans to roll-out easyMobile into Europe are still going ahead. Last month TDC - one of the companies behind easyMobile - has teamed up with Dutch network operator Telfort to launch the no-frills mobile service in the Netherlands.

Speaking of easymobile last month, Rasmussen said he had "great expectations for easymobile in the Netherlands", proclaiming: "We have already introduced the easymobile concept in the UK and easymobile gained our first international experience. In spite of the incumbent British operators vodafone, o2, orange, T-mobile, having responded aggressively to easymobile's introduction, the easymobile launch in the UK was very successful and easymobile exceeded our expectations."

As for allegations that easymobile was copying virgin mobile, easyMobile hit back, accusing Virgin Mobile of "panicking" in the face of competition."It's obvious that Virgin is under a lot of pressure," said easyMobile boss Frank Rasmussen.

"They are met by demands from shareholders to increase profitability per customer, and at the same time market forces require Virgin to compete on much more than a funky logo. There's no doubt Virgin is under a lot of pressure, and their reaction to the launch of easyMobile.com clearly shows that Virgin Mobile faces a difficult future from easymobile."