Dave wrote on Mar 27
th, 2013 at 12:44am:
Why is this? Is it because there are lots of them about or is it because people are tending towards deals that come with a handset?
I think people are now less inclined to a deal with an included so called but not actually "free" handset than they have ever been and are more inclined to buy the SIM separately than they ever were and this is precisely why the SIM only deals are becoming more competitive (which by the way they have always been on the continent where new handset prices have not been subsidised as much as they are in the UK).
Phones4U and CarPhoneWarehouse now sell only unlocked phones, even their PayAsYou Go phones. Phones4U even lets you Upgrade your phone to another one after only six months with a Pay As You Go Network at a lower price than if you were a brand new customer for that phone. This is because the networks pay them a small bonus towards such an upgrade to try to retain their customers.
But one and the same Phones4U is also selling a very cheap SIM only deal from MVNO Lycamobile with Unlimited Calls, Unlimited texts and data (latter subject to a real world 3GB of use) in packs in their shops that you can then drop in to one of these unlocked phones.
All this is reliant on one thing, namely that there is more and more competition due to the MVNOs and the backbone capacity of the networks has been vastly upped to handle the data needs of high end customers. As this happens the costs of more modest amounts of data on old 3G technologies (given that 4G is now launched by EE) falls.
So what is the real cost to Ovivo of their package per month per customer. Probably only a £1 or £2 a customer as the average one does not use nearly all the data allowance.
Against that the information they hope to gather about your internet use habits and sell to advertisers for very targeted to the user's habits may be worth much more. Look at how much websites pay to one another for new customer leads. Without these payaments being then sites like
www.topcashback.co.uk would not even exist.
The only think I am not convinced about is whether seeing a whole page ad that blocks your web browsing progress until you have at least ignored it (I can see eventually it is it is likely they will make you scroll to the bottom of the page and make you spend a minimum time on the advert page) is going to be acceptable to anyone using their smartphone a lot for internet use. I don't use my mobile a lot so it is acceptable to me to have enough data and calls to use my Smartphone when I need to without worrying about the cost.
Of course I didn't know a deal like Virgin's 1200 minutes and 1GB and 1200 texts with no pesky ads and no long contract for £12 per month was going to come out. I must say 1200 minutes is seriously attractive as it lets you cover more or less all your landline call use.
Quote:I suppose you can't complain if the allowance is cut a bit. After all, you're not spending anything and getting free calls and texts and itemisation to boot!
Well they brought most of it back in a few weeks once they had come up with a strategy to stop abusive users exceeding the 500MB limit by making them pay to do so and by making the product unattractive to the tourist market by tripling the price of the SIM.
Quote:I wonder what will happen when the further reduction in termination rates happens (can't remember exactly when it's happening and by how much). I suppose that, as a small operator, more calls go to other operators than come in to Ovivo, so a reduction in termination charges has to benefit it.
What about tethering; do they allow it?
I'm pretty sure they have a way to stop tethering but haven't tried yet. If they didn't then how could they hope to sell any of their data only SIMs that only include 500MB per months compared to 400MB plus 150 mins of calls and 150 mins of texts on the Smartphone SIM deal.
Not sure about the fall in terminations rates and what the impact of that will be.