Tesco Ireland launches mobile network

Tesco Ireland’s newest venture, Tesco Mobile, launched on Monday. The only exciting part of this news is the 089 prefix and it’s not exactly trouser-wetting material.

Tesco claims that customers are confused by different price plans and tariffs and so, will only offer one basic price plan. The new 089 numbers all operate on a prepay basis and offer 20c calls to any number, any time and 9c text messages.

Tesco plans to obtain 5 percent of the mobile phone market within four years and 150,000 customers. For those of you worried about coverage, don’t worry, it’s not as rubbish as you first thought. Tesco are piggybacking off of O2 who claim to have network coverage to cover 99 percent of the population (although I never hardly ever had coverage as I was included in that 1 percent [Would that be a hint of bitterness ? -Ed]).

Tesco Mobile customers are able to rack up Clubcard points while they talk if they register their Clubcard to their mobile number and can double these points by topping up in a Tesco store. They can also avail of free texts to other Tesco Mobile customers.