Unlimited Usage Plans: Are They Worth It?

Posted on November 20th, 2008. Written by Rico.

The point of a white paper received yesterday, written by the ITMC Institute, is clear:

The popular ‘Unlimited Call & Text’ plan as… marketed and implemented today by SUN Cellular is expensive and misleading, and is unfair and disadvantageous to the consumer… Given the actual calling habits of the average consumer, and the current state of service and support,… [these] plans are more a case of little value for more money, and consumers pay more for less.

It’s easy to characterize ITMC’s statement as an attack on SUN, but at least they back up their statements up with some hard data. I’m less convinced about one of their conclusions though.

Cellphone Usage Data

The white paper points out SUN’s “flagship service”—unlimited texts and calls for one day at P25—and proceeds to show why P25 a day may be too much:

the average mobile phone user only consumes a maximum of 214 minutes of calls per month. At standard calling rates, this would have a value of P214.00 of usage [or P7.14 of load/day]—yet the users pay P25/day, or 350% over [actual] needs… on a monthly basis, the user pays P750.00 for P214.00 worth of usage.

That depends on how much an “average mobile phone user” really pays for every minute. Don’t other providers charge more than a peso? Did the “P214.00 of usage” refer to Globe’s and Smart’s own unlimited promos? Lastly, does ITMC’s research on cellphone usage data even consider the cost of texting?

Service Provider Reliability Data

I find ITMC’s data on dropped calls more convincing. They were trying to point out that, even if anyone decided to maximize SUN’s P25/day scheme, the provider’s unreliable network would prevent them from doing so:

In a recent November 2008 survey by the NTC on telco usability, SUN Cellular was reported to have the highest drop call rate of 17.05% which was alarmingly far off from… competitors Globe Telecommunications (1.99% drop call rate) and SMART Telecommunications (3.79%) were reporting. [emphasis mine]

17.05% is very high, close to 1 out 6 calls dropped. Wow, I had no idea that SUN Cellular was that unreliable.

While it doesn’t seem likely to me that the Filipino’s average monthly cellphone usage only amounts to P214, I can’t help but hope that SUN works quickly to improve its network’s reliability. Forgot about coverage, let’s start with successfully connecting those calls first,