Comments on: What’s wrong with Telco pricing and how to fix it

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:43:19 +0000

This doesn’t even take into account the high MTRs telcos charge each other that I keep hearing about. Surely this keeps prices artificially inflated?

By: billbennettnz

billbennettnz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:55:01 +0000

I seem to remember Theresa Gattung boasting something along the lines of: Telecom had deliberately opaque charging structures as a way of bamboozling customers and maximising profits.

My initial reaction to this was the first telco to introduce truly transparent and understandable pricing would have a major competitive advantage.

This still would be the case today…

By: Ray

Ray — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:06:05 +0000

I would have assumed people would tend to use more if they knew they would get a better rate once the cross the next threshold. ( of course having a billing system that could provide the information so you can decide is another question )

I think the only reason usage is consistent is billing was consistent and you effectively had penalties for over use

By: bobjohnson

bobjohnson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:12:23 +0000

The old Flexi plan did pretty much what you are asking for minutes. alas it does not exist under XT.

The reality is though, that for most people, they do tend to use very similar amounts of minutes each month. check your bills for the last 2 years. With a few exceptions for people who have particularly unusual phone bills, most people will find that every bill is within about 10% of the average.

I do agree with one part though – data overage charges are ridiculous. However if you are using more than 3GB a month of data, then you should really consider getting a landline and using that instead to download your pornorgraphy and warez :D

By: stuartm

stuartm — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:53:58 +0000

I suspect that if you confronted Vodafone or Telecom with this blog post and asked them ‘why?’ they wouldn’t be able to come up with a satisfactory response. I imagine them just shrugging their shoulders and saying “because that’s how it’s always been done.”

Will 2Degrees save us with sensible pricing plans? I hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it… They’ll get my business if they offer a decent data plan.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:48:57 +0000

If you are travelling (roaming) the data rate varies from $10,000 to $30,000 per Gb on Vodafone. There may be some data out there that represents equivalent value to me, but I have yet to come across it.

By: Lance Wiggs

Lance Wiggs — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:44:27 +0000

Q Nice analogy.

What I am saying is that you make the pricing plan for the road users easier to understand. If I drive a lot of miles then I get a cheaper per mile rate – end of story. I don’t have to estimate how many miles I will drive next month, or, worse, 11 months from now

Telco’s should be much better at estimating the total miles driven each month as an aggregate than we are as individuals. I would hope that they ignore the customer plan numbers and look to historic data and internal calculations for estimating aggregate demand.

So why are they placing the burden on us for the estimation?

By: Q

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:26:03 +0000

Come on Lance… It’s not like pre-buying petrol it’s the Road we’re talking about here! (even a SuperHighway…)

The issue is that when we all get our cars (or iPhones and Macbooks) out they all need to fit at the same time.

What’s worse is that there are a couple of roads that go to the same place so lots of money has to be spent on getting you to drive on the ‘best’ road. This is called Marketing! What’s worse now is that there are new companies that make you think you are driving on a different road when in fact they are using someone else’s and you are just paying for marketing and billing…