Thursday, February 01, 2007

Let's Talk.....

If you have seen this Let’s Talk advertisement from TM for the past weeks, you should consider subscribing to it. I signed up yesterday during the launching ceremony at Bangsar TMPoint. This is the call plan that we have been working on for the past couple of months. To me it is not that I’m obligated to subscribe to it, but if I’m a ‘normal’ customer, I would surely take it. If you have not seen this call plan, you can visit http://www.lets-talk.com.my/package.html for details.

I signed up the Let’s Talk 108 package. With this plan, I get unlimited local calls. In other words, I can call another fixed line number within the local call boundary and talk non-stop. Apart from that, I can make unlimited calls to other part of the country during the weekends and they charge lower call rates to mobile numbers. All this at a fix monthly cost of RM108 inclusive of rental. Depending on your monthly bill pattern, you can choose the right package that suits your requirement. This plan provides some level of certainty to my monthly phone expenses. On average, I’ve been spending about RM100 on the house phone bill but with this package, I get more value! I’m will still pay the same amount money like before but this plan actually gives me more calling capacities! Perhaps more than twice the talking time. The good thing is, I get to upgrade my Streamyx bandwith to 1Mb as well, just by signing up to this package!

Now whenever we’re at home, we will use the fixed line. I’ve already paid for it so we should use this. It’s cheaper than mobile phone rates and we can save on our mobile phone charges. You see, mobile phone should be use when you’re in ‘mobile’ mode. But when you’re in a fixed location, especially at home, just pick up the fixed line and talk for hours at a fixed cost.

This new pricing scheme is a glimpse of what the future of telecommunication service pricing will be. They are preparing the customers towards the Next Generation Network (NGN) environment. In the future, communication charges are going to be set on session basis, no longer the usage minutes. This call plan is just the beginning from TM to encourage their customers to use the fixed line. Later, product bundling i.e packaging Fixed Line, Broadband and Mobile services at a fixed monthly costs could be TM’s next strategy of pricing. I hope they can consolidate our bills as well. All our communication and multimedia needs charged in a single bill at a fixed monthly rate with unlimited call time. That would be fantastic wouldn’t it?

Hmmmm…this sort of thing is long overdue in this country. The industry is just so saturated with minutes based charging. I’m glad that TM is spearheading this flat based call plan charges. Now I just hope that it can be accepted by the consumers. Our next task is to monitor the take up of this offering on a daily basis. Feel free to comment and provide your views on this latest offer from TM.

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