O2 brings in home tariff in UK after all

Despite telling journalists at its annual gathering late in 2006 that it wouldn’t be replicating its German home zone tariff (Genion) in the UK, because there was insufficient price differential to exploit, O2 has decided that the UK does need a home zone play after all.
The operator is launching ‘Favourite Place’ – a location based Pre-Pay tariff.  From March 30th 2007, customers can choose a location and make 500 minutes of free calls to UK landlines and other O2 mobiles from that postcode every month.
O2 is hoping the package will appeal to students (likely), as well as home and location-based (ie, poor sods stuck in an office) workers.
No launch is complete without its attendant gimmick and this one is a competition for customers to take in a 6×4 inch photo of their favourite place into their local O2 store, where it will be displayed and entered into a prize draw to win £1000 to spend on their favourite place.
O2 is also running a text poll to find out where their customers’ favourite place is.  Customers can choose between the gym, the office, home, the pub or university, simply by texting the word ‘PLACE’ followed by their choice (e.g. PLACE PUB) to 60600. If the winner of that one is gym, then things really are getting desperate.
More seriously, the tariff is a sign that substitution of fixed minutes is now sufficiently attractive to O2 that it is prepared to give those minutes (or at least 500 per month of them) away, to attract users onto the network.