Vodafone goes up against rivals with new Clear Mobile offering

Vodafone has followed in the footsteps of rivals Eir and Three with the introduction of a stripped-back mobile offering through the Clear Mobile brand.

Clear Mobile is a new brand, which Vodafone is keen to stress is a standalone, independent entity with a separate management and operations team.

It is launching with a new online, Sim-only offering, which is aimed at a wide demographic of customers looking to forgo bells and whistles in favour of a simple, cheaper proposition with no long-term contracts.

The service offers unlimited calls and texts for a flat fee every month. There is also no fair usage policy on data, although speeds are capped at 5 megabits per second.

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Clear Mobile will cost €12.99 per month. There is also a €12.99 joining fee, although this does not apply to the first 25,000 customers to register for the new service online.

As the plan is Sim-only, customers need to have their own unlocked mobile phone to use the service. In addition, customer care is only available via online chat and social media.

‘Pared-back option’

A spokesman for Vodafone described the new service as a “pared back, low-cost option”.

“For Vodafone, in the context of Covid-19, it felt like the right time to provide more choice for consumers in this space. Clear Mobile offers an unlimited, online, Sim-only proposition at €12.99. It is a simple, standout product offering – mobile in its purest form. There is a wide demographic of non-Vodafone customers in the market looking for this type of proposition,” he said.

Eir shook up a largely stagnant mobile market when it introduced GoMo in October 2019. The service clocked up 200,000 customers in its first eight months, proving particularly popular with younger customers. It originally offered a €10 per month flat fee “for life” plan for the first 100,000 customers, with the price point rising to €13 for other subscribers.

Three’s 48 service, a youth-focused digital mobile brand that first launched in 2012, responded to the popularity of GoMo with a €7.99 per month offering last August.