They’ve got 206,000 customers - is it time to rejoin the fold?

2degrees showed it can foot it with the big guns, announcing 206,000 customers in its first six months of operation - of which 50,000 have ported their numbers from Vodafone and Telecom.

The announcement was made just a couple of hours after Telecom revealed it has acquired 60,000 customers to the XT Network in the past financial quarter. Vodafone announced last week it had acquired 9,000. 2degrees CEO Eric Hertz says the customer acquisition is evenly split between the past two financial quarters.

So why did every telco record a rise? It’s because people are using more than one handset or SIM card. Hertz says penetration is likely to continue to rise above 100%, and in ten years time he predicts there will be 500% penetration in the mobile market.

Hertz says 80% of 2degrees customers come from Vodafone but he wouldn’t say if his prepay customers were spending more on texts and phone calls than Vodafone, which has an ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of $20. Hertz did say that 2degrees' ARPU was more than Telecom’s, which is $10.

With 2degrees demonstrating they can compete in the market, is it time they rejoined the industry association which seeks commercial solutions for industry issues? 2degrees has been staunch in demanding that Mobile Termination Rates should be regulated, but there is a raft of other issues that arise in a maturing telecommunications market and, in New Zealand, these are usually debated in the Telecommunications Carriers Forum (TCF).

In June last year 2degrees (in its former incarnation NZ Communications) quit the TCF, claiming it was “largely controlled” by Telecom, Vodafone and TelstraClear and that membership was “an unnecessary and time consuming distraction.”

Telecommunications Review asked 2degrees chief commercial officer Bill McCabe (pictured) if the telco is rejoining, especially as the TCF’s new CEO David Stone has said publically he’s keen toget them back on board.

“It’s great that they want us back and we’re certainly looking at going back into the TCF,” McCade told TR. “However, there are one or two things around the structure which we’ll probably talk to David Stone, the CEO, about.”

McCabe wouldn’t say what it is about the TCF structure he wants changed, but he says they are meeting with Stone “quite soon” and he expects to make a decision about rejoining the TCF in the next couple of months.