Sharebrokers have been distinctly underwhelmed by Telecom's new XT mobile network announcements, which lacked some pricing detail and future plans except for some "cloud proposals".
A media briefing in Auckland was told mobile TV was coming, an iPhone could be coming, but details like costs for data downloads were missing.
ABN Amro Craigs broker Chris Timms said there were no "game-changers" in the announcements.
"The disappointments included a lack of insight into proposed data plans. We would be surprised if they undercut the Vodafone $1-a-day, 10MB casual rate."
The failure to close an iPhone deal was also a disappointment.
There were several risks as Telecom migrated customers to the new network, he said.
Invariably, customers would optimise plans as they switched networks.
Telecom faced substantial costs to subsidise handsets with the cheapest XT handset $150 compared with Vodafone's cheapest at $70.
The new network pricing plans include use at one rate rather than distinguishing between peak and off-peak rates.
The per-second billing after the first minute could dent Telecom's revenue by about 7%, Mr Timms said.
The third part of the plan detail was the shared calling which allowed families or small businesses to pool their "buckets of minutes" to access lower marginal per minute rates.
"We understand these plans are common in the United States but can be frustrating for the average household as the teenagers tend to soak up all the minutes."
The plans announced this week would have been set more than nine months ago given the lead times required for billing system changes, he said.
In that respect, it was not surprising Telecom chose to keep it fairly simple with the indicative number of plans falling from 60 to 14.
However, that was misleading, as old plans remained unchanged for the CDMA network until the 2012 closure.
The 14 new one-rate plans would have a myriad of modular bolt-ons for messaging, data and calling favourites, Mr Timms said.
Forsyth Barr broker Tony Conroy said the details of its pricing under the new network did not significantly differ from Telecom's old rates, although they were still 5% to 10%% below those of Vodafone and included per-second billing rates.
Vodafone would probably move to match the prices.
The $10 text might be gone, though new plans including texts and household package deals were expected to be announced at the launch next week.
