Jan 14 (Japan Times) - Following moves by its rivals, KDDI Corp. said Wednesday it will roll out new cut-price smartphone plans, further intensifying competition among mobile phone carriers under intense pressure from the government.
KDDI said it will introduce a new low-cost mobile service plan with 20 gigabytes of data for ¥2,480 a month starting in March, the cheapest among the three mega-carriers’ comparable offers. The two other competitors — NTT Docomo Inc. and SoftBank Corp. — recently announced their 20GB plans for ¥2,980.
While the offerings of NTT Docomo and SoftBank, which will also start in March, include up to five minutes of free talk time per domestic voice call, KDDI will make that a ¥500 option in an effort to differentiate itself.
KDDI said the reason why it made the free five-minute call optional was because more than 60% of users under the age of 30 make less than 10 minutes of voice calls a month, as they can also use other apps, such as Line, to make them for free.
Source: ANNnewsCH
