Asda Supermarket Sells £5 Cellphone

UK supermarket chain Asda has started selling cellphones for a fiver ($10). The handsets are pay-as-you-go and available on the Virgin, T-Mobile and Orange networks, with tariffs starting at 12p (24¢) per minute. Available models include the decidedly low-tech Nokia 1112 and the Sagem my220x.

The Sagem has actually been on sale as a pre-pay phone in the UK for a while: Last year it retailed for £15, but the Wal Mart subsidiary's £5 pricepoint takes these handsets firmly into disposable territory: Speaking to the Daily Mail, an Asda spokesman said that

You can just grab one off the shelf, use it once and throw it away if you wanted [...] It's great for people whose regular mobile phone is perhaps broken or they want a back up, or those who have come to this country for just a few weeks.

Of course, the spokesman forgot to mention the true market for these burners: Drug dealers. The irony doesn't escape me: In my freshman year, I was followed and harassed by a drug dealer in Nottingham's branch of Asda.

Asda launch the £5 mobile phone [Daily Mail]