Carphone chief's free calls pledge

CHARLES Dunstone, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse, will tomorrow put down a fresh marker in the battle for phone customers.

He is offering customers of his talktalk fixed-line venture unlimited free calls for life to one other subscriber.

Dunstone believes the move will attract more than 400,000 talktalk customers by March.

Carphone's fixed-line venture uses BT's network to carry calls, but switching to being billed by talktalk takes just one call with no need to buy a box to plug into a phone socket.

A City analyst said: 'It means that companies don't have to build networks. Consumers can just switch. Carphone Warehouse sees this as an easy game to get into.

'Historically, the introduction of this technology in other markets has led to sharp falls in incumbents' market share.'

Dunstone said: 'We've done our sums and we think we can do this. We all feel guilty about not calling our best friends enough. Now you can talk to them 24 hours a day, 365 days a year if you like.'