| Visafone: The newest
bride goes to the village
By BISI OLALEYE
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The much awaited mobile phone with the pay off ‘passport
to reach the world’; Visafone is currently the nearest
bride at the Computer Village, Ikeja, and Lagos.
The new mobile phone from the stable of Visafone Communications
Ltd is already enjoying more patronage at the village, owing
to its reduces tariffs and being the lowest priced quality
phone in the country.
The phone that comes in three different ranges has one with
an FM radio, three ways calling, Brew downloads, 32tone midi
ringer, slim speaker, 200 Uim phone book and a three-hour
talk time.
While the second one, without an FM radio, but made up with
a four hour talk time up to 190 hours standby time, colour
screen, games, calendar, memo and calculator. And the other
for the middle and upper class, a simple but beautiful sleek
Nokia phone.
Just as the features differs, the prices also differs, while
one is supposedly to go for N8, 000, N1, 600, and the other
N2, 000, but it appears that owing to the high demand, many
dealers now sell between N2, 800 and N3, 000, while the other
one for N1, 600 is now N2, 200 at the Village.
Although, the company’s pay off is “Go get your
visa today,” which is meant for everyone to be able
to afford a phone in the country but with the way things are
going in the Village, and Ikeja environ, according to Suleiman
Abubakar, a customer, the feat may not be achieved.
“It is a good concept and a good phone but what happens
now, which differs from the promo. You buy the sim differently
for N200, buy recharge card N1, 000 and buy the phone separately,
which is not supposed to be. Asides this, many of them (dealers)
are now hoarding it to create artificial scarcity in the Village,
which is one of the things that is killing most of the good
intentions of either the government or strong firms in the
country.
Emmanuel Duru, another customer from Port Harcourt in an e-mail
to Daily Sun commended the initiatives of Visafone Communications
Ltd in trying to go back to the basis by customising the phone,
just like it is done abroad. But he opined that, Nigerians
are still not ready for customisation owing to epileptic power
supply.
“Many people use more than one network, usually when
the other battery is down, the average Nigerian would swap
sims but with Visafone, it is not going to be possible, which
may be one of the challenges, a subscriber would have to contend
with.”
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