Confuse Consumers with Mobile Data Offering

Observation based on Market Analysis

There has been a wild trend during the past years by mobile operators to package their mobile data offerings in all kinds of imaginary ways. Often the intentions are good and the idea is to give consumers more choices & flexibility to choose from. But in reality, they typically just make consumers’ lives even more complicated.

A particularly popular method has been to add to the standard volume data packet (MB/GB) a time element. So instead of buying e.g. a 1GB mobile data packet, you “can” now buy the same 1GB but limited by time, say for example 1GB for 1 day. This, in our opinion is rubbish, underestimation of the consumers and cheating. Even though these time+volume packets are sometimes sold with discounted prices compared to plain volume packets. Thus being seemingly good deals.

But by combining another dimension, time, to the already incomprehensible measurement of data volume, megabytes, operators are making their customers to worry about them both, not just one: if I activate this now, do I get exactly that 24 hours from now or will it start already earlier, say at midnight? Or at another time? When? How much data do I have left? What about time, how much time do I have left? What is my status with these? Help!  

Unfortunately, the common hidden agenda for operators here is that even though prices may seem to be lower, in practice due to the volume + time limitations a lot of that data quota ends up being unused. Once the clock has ticked, the unused data is gone. Cannot be retrieved. So the consumer always feels that he lost something: either time or volume. Lose lose.

This makes the data actually MORE expensive, not less. And furthermore: typically once your data quota is exhausted, you are dropped to the so called pay-as-you-go charging. Which is excruciatingly expensive! Depletes your balance in the speed of the light, adding another insult to injury.

We prefer to keep things simple. Know exactly what you buy, how much is left & do not worry about your data connectivity. Connectivity is important for all of us, but not that important. It should be fun, transparent and effortless.

Due to volume AND time limitations lot of data is unused. So the consumer always feels that he lost something: either time or volume. Lose lose.