T-Mobile tariffs give free calls to five friends

T-Mobile has launched a range of new mobile phone tariffs that include unlimited calls, texts and picture messages to five people.

The company says the Myfaves tariffs were created in response to research showing that the average Briton makes around two-thirds of their mobile phone calls within an "inner circle" of five people.

It will include unlimited, uncapped contact to any five numbers on any national network. These will be determined through a user homepage which displays the five chosen contacts as icons or photographs on the front screen of the phone.

People wishing to swap one or all five of their nominated contacts can also do so at the end of each billing month using either their phone or via the T-Mobile website. The home screen and tariff will be available only on selected phones, which include the Samsung U600 and D900i, the Nokia 6300 and Sony Ericsson K770 and W880.

There are three Myfaves tariffs, all of which are based on an 18-month contract. Myfaves 25 costs £25 and gives users 25 minutes of calls and 50 texts to all numbers outside the favourites list. Myfaves 35 costs £35 and gives users 100 minutes and 200 texts, while Myfaves 45 costs £45 and gives users 200 minutes and 400 texts.

Once a user goes over these allowances calls cost 30p per minute, texts cost 12p and picture messages cost 20p. Although these additional costs may seem high, price comparison site Uswitch said that these were “standard” compared to other network providers' tariffs. However, it warned that the new plans might not be particularly good value for all customers.

Chris Frost, a representative for the comparison site, told Computeractive: “Whilst this is an interesting tariff, the important thing to think about here is whether a person is going to just limit these calls to the five people.

“Outside of the five friends, 25 minutes isn’t really that much to keep in touch and if they have more than five friends who they regularly keep in contact with then a person may find they are ramping up their bills,” he added.