South Africa’s Nashua Mobile, an independent telecommunications solutions provider, has announced an extension of two of its fixed-cost mobile services Xtreme Data and Xtreme Data Premium to selected Samsung Android handsets.
The service, already available to Nashua Mobile customers who have Nokia Asha and Nokia Lumia phones, is a bid by the handset makers and Nashua Mobile to challenge the affordable and very popular Blackberry service BIS (Blackberry Internet Service).
Mark Taylor, Chief Executive Officer at Nashua Mobile said: “Our flat-rate mobile data services have experienced fantastic adoption from Nokia users over the past 8 months since we first introduced them as the country’s first real alternatives to the BlackBerry Internet service.”
He added that the company believes that smartphone users should have “the peace of mind of an affordable flat-rate data service whichever handset they choose”.
“So we’re excited to extend Xtreme data to the country’s leading Android handset supplier, Samsung,” he said.
Users who prefer Android smartphones will now be able to enjoy all the benefits of the mobile Internet for an affordable monthly tariff.
The Xtreme Data and Xtreme Data Premium services will be available on the Samsung Ace Advance, Samsung Galaxy Y, Samsung Galaxy Pocket and the Samsung Galaxy Note II smartphones with effect from 7 November.
Exclusive to Nashua Mobile, Xtreme Data is one of the few flat-rate data packages available to people who don’t want to use a BlackBerry smartphone. It allows smartphone users to send email, enjoy social media, and do more besides without worrying about getting high data bills at the end of the month.
At a fixed cost of R59 per month, Xtreme Data offers consumers unlimited access to email, browsing, social networking and instant messaging from their handsets.
The Xtreme Data Premium service at R139 per month, allows users to do everything they can do with the original Xtreme Data as well as download apps and games and view YouTube, an option recommended for users who consume 400MB or more per month.
Xtreme Data and Xtreme Data Premium are both subject to fair usage policies, meaning customers will experience a decrease in download speeds once they have exceeded a threshold in their data usage for the month – 100MB for the Xtreme Data standard service and 400MB in the case of Premium.
Although this could be viewed as a negative, do note that users who have their data shaped at this point will be able to keep using their data service for email, social networking or chatting and will only experience a degraded experience when downloading apps or streaming video on YouTube.
“Now, Android users can also enjoy the full benefit of the mobile Internet without worrying about depleting their data bundle halfway through the end of the month, paying exorbitant out of bundle rates or getting a huge bill at the end of the month,” Taylor added.
