Bay Mobile folds

Bay Mobile will be closing shop next week, barely a year after entering the mobile telephony market.

Simon De Cesare, chief executive officer of the Eden Leisure Group, which owned the company, said he had enough of "relentlessly fighting off the competition from the large operators who have deep pockets and massive marketing resources".

Mr De Cesare said nobody from Bay Mobile would lose their job but they would be redistributed within the group of companies.

The service, which was primarily aimed at young people, was launched on September 11, 2008 with one tariff and no differentiation between peak and off-peak times. It offered one low-cost talk rate and the lowest SMS bundles and unit price on the market.

Mr De Cesare said Bay Mobile had now partnered with Melita Mobile to support its customers after negotiating the "best deal and value for money" for its subscribers. This meant that Bay Mobile users would benefit from special offers for switching to Melita but the changeover would not be automatic. He said it was the best price alternative before the July 4 cutoff date, when Bay Mobile would cease operations.

Melita Mobile will offer customers a free mobile phone, a free month of calls, video calls and messages to all local networks, plus free mobile internet access. On top of that, once the month is up, they will continue to enjoy a call rate of 10c per call to all Melita Mobile and fixed line numbers up to April 2010 and will not have any time windows to top up.