Submitted by Mike Grenville on Tue, 01 Jun 2004 15:28

BBC 1 TV will air an interesting program tonight at 7pm focussing on why UK mobile users are paying such heavy prices compared to their Danish counterparts.

The interactive consumer TV series 'Brassed Off Britain' enters its final week tonight (Tuesday 1st June).

Tonight Matt Allwright looks at why mobile phone contracts and tariffs are so complicated. He visits a town in Northern Ireland where residents are charged international rates for calling their neighbours, and discovers why the cost of calls is so much lower in Denmark.

John Strand says that the Danish mobile market is full of "Pinocchio" customers that are cutting their strings to their "dormant" operator subscriptions that they were tied to - a trend that is now costing the Danish mobile operators 48 - 64 million Euro a year.

Strand say sthat the established European mobile operators and service providers will soon be part of a major dogfight for customers as the discount mobile service providers are ready to take off. They will impact the European Mobile Operators in the same way that the low-cost airlines have crippled the National Airlines.

A recent Strand report describes and analyses eight Internet-based Mobile Operators that have turned the Danish mobile market upside down. It examines the historical development, the extremely hard competition they have created, how this has affected the market shares, the resulting fall in prices pr. minute and SMS prices and finally last but not least, how churn has exploded as a huge number and share of subscribers terminate their contracts.

BBC One 7pm 1st June

www.bbc.co.uk/bob/

The Moment of Truth - A portrait of the Discount Mobile Operators' success.