Every mobile user is different with those who like talk a lot while there are others who just need mobile data. As telcos try to create a single plan to cater for the average users, they are often expensive or skewed towards particular a type of usage pattern.
To give greater flexibility, operator SingTel from our southern neighbour has introduced Easy Mobile which lets you customised your postpaid plan to suit your lifestyle. It allows you to tweak your plan either for more calls, text or even data usage on a monthly basis. Read on to find out more.
The basis of such plan is the number of units where each unit is valued at either 50 minutes of voice calls, 500 SMS/MMS or 0.5GB (512MB) of mobile internet. Then you can subscribe to a plan option according to your mobile appetite as follows:
Small – 4 units – $33/month
Medium – 10 units – $45/month
Large – 16 units – $65/month
Xtra Large – 26 units – $105/month
The only catch is that you would need to have at least 1 unit for each category of call, text and data. So for those who use a lot of data and occasional phone calls would not be able to opt out of SMS completely. Taking the Small option subscriber as an example, you can set 50 minutes of voice (1 unit), 500 SMS (1 unit) and 1GB of data (2 units). Where as for Medium, you can rake up the full units for data up to 4GB (8 units) with 50 voice calls (1 unit) and 500 SMS (1 unit). If the following month you find yourself making more calls and use lesser data than expected, you can adjust the units to cater for your usage change. The adjustment of units can be done through their easymobile.sg website or via its mobile app.
The idea of giving flexibility to users is quite good. however tweaking it requires a better understanding of your phone bill. If this is implemented in Malaysia, the value of each units should be competitive with what’s currently being offered by talk and data centric plans. An existing postpaid plan with bundled mobile data without phone calls and SMS like Maxis SurfMore might be cheaper (cost per GB) compared to a flexi plan. Would you go for such a plan if it was introduced by our local telcos? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.