easyGroup to launch mobile service

As well as easy cinemas, planes and cars we could be seeing easy mobile services if easyGroup serial entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou has his way. The company behind easyJet, easyInternet and easyCinema plans to launch easyMobile by the end of this year.

An easyGroup spokesman told us, “the business model which is particularly attractive to us at the moment is one where you sell the sim card from your website. Most people already have handsets into which they can insert our sim card with pre-paid airtime.”

Mobile rival Richard Branson has already warned Stelios that he is “too late” to enter the mobile telephony market. Branson says “there’s crying need for what he's thinking."

Stelios is not to be put off that easily though: “Virgin Mobile was a good idea four or five years ago selling 'funky' handsets through high street shops with expensive airtime and all the gimmicks! Selling just sim cards from a website with cheap pre-paid airtime, is the most efficient way to use mobile telephony. People can use their current handsets and Virgin Mobile can carry on selling their expensive, funky handsets through their expensive high street shops.”

Stelios hopes internet retailing will take the mobile world by storm and plans to launch easyMobile by the end of this year.