Go Mobile has launched the largest mobile phone yet to be seen – but with a difference.

The phone is a wireless sim-operated land phone which can send and receive texts.

While people will certainly not been seen out with it, this phone offers an element of portability meaning one can move it from room to room or even from one’s residence to the summer house and back.

The phone is known in official jargon as the Jablatron GDP-2 GSM Desktop phone – but in reality is being marketed as a simple alternative for texting from home in a simple and efficient manner.

The phone uses a simple Go Mobile sim-card and incorporates a large, simple screen as well as large buttons and a standard QWERTY keyboard – making it particularly attractive to the older generations.

Go Mobile chairman Juanito Camilleri said, “The phone costs around Lm50 and is a comfortable supplementary option to one’s land phone”.

The phone also comprises a 200-entry phone book and a speaker phone.

The phones, which are manufactured in the Czech Republic, are already on sale in Asia and parts of Europe.

He said that existing mobile rates will apply when using the desktop phone, depending on whether the sim inserted is a contract or pay-as-you-go plan.

However, he said that better rates could be introduced in the future, especially in the field of Go-to-Go calls.

“Go Mobile’s subscriber base is approaching 155,000 customers... the growth was remarkable since this was only the fifth year of the company’s operation,” Prof. Camilleri pointed out.

The company is giving 20 free extra minutes to loyal contract customers and has launched Call me for prepaid customers, giving them 50 cents credit with every hour of incoming calls.

“Go mobile has also launched special offers on go Live handsets, which include discounted prices for Samsung, Nokia and Sagem MMS phones, inclusive of 100 free MMS and a neck strap. Prices start from Lm49,” he said.

Prof. Camilleri also said that there was still room for improvement in the local mobile telephony market since “In Europe, the average is for 24 per cent of all traffic to be generated by mobile phones, while in Malta it is only 14 per cent”.

He stressed that the market was now typified by the convergence of technology.

“And we are also seeing the possibility of a third network provider,” he concluded.