I think a lot of us have been surprised by how well Qtel has responded to competition.
From a fairly lackadaisical organisation, (one friend in Qtel remembers going to seminars to teach employees the meaning of competition, and described the employees as bewildered at the concept), Qtel have become much more aggressive at marketing.
One huge advantage they have got is a captive market.
After years of dominating the market, most customers have Qtel accounts - meaning that Qtel can and does bombard them with text marketing, whereas Vodafone has to go all out to reach the same people.
Nevertheless, Vodafone has scored a point today.
On twitter and elsewhere users are pointing out that while Qtel has texted users telling them to use up their free minutes by Sunday, Vodafone have just extended their mobile phone promotion till December, giving Red and Freedom users 300MB of free internet usage.
