Julia posted a point today about Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile (and, actually, Sprint and Helio) all beginning to offer unlimited voice calls for a fixed monthly fee. Call it $100 a month — or thereabouts.
I’ve been waiting for this sort of reality-check consolidation for quite a while. For years, actually. I’ve been getting wound up no end by ‘greedy’ mobile operators charging silly amounts of money for voice calls. Whenever I describe an operator as ‘greedy’, I get an avalanche of emails (and a few comment replies) citing factors like ‘having to pay to keep the lights on’ and so on.
I’m not advocating free unlimited calls. Not at all. But I think $100 a month — or £50 pounds a month is a reasonable fee to pay per month for unlimited voice calls form your mobile phone.
I have little time at all for Vodafone UK’s 40 pence per minute out-of-plan charges to call another UK landline. It’s these sort of stupid, stupid price points that wind up consumers continually. But good on Vodafone for continuing to stick to its pricing guns. If customers are stupid enough to pay…
We’ve had unlimited price creep in the UK for some time. For example on T-Mobile UK’s Flext price plan, you can generally get a variety of unlimited landline calls thrown in (sometimes off-peak). But we’ve not good sensible unlimited offerings as yet because there’s substantial pain — perceived or real (depending on your viewpoint) — in offering ‘unlimited’ cross network minutes here in the UK. Big pain. Still.
Verizon’s offering — $99 — includes all voice calls, local, national, landline or mobile. They just don’t mind. Pile it high, sell it (resonably) cheap. The US mantra. Commit to paying them at leat $99, together with data, email and other up-sell services and you’re boosting ARPU to $150 per month. I like it.
I like it for the operator, I like it for the consumer. It’s going to be quite a while before we see anything like this in the UK, right?
You never know, 3UK might surprise us all..
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Bensmith on 
Comment by PhoneBoy on 20 February 2008:
The problem you guys have in the UK is the fact it’s a different charge to call a mobile versus a landline. Here in the US, it’s generally the same cost. Well, not EXACTLY, but in most cases, the per-minute difference is small enough that all the providers eat it. Certainly where the vast majority of the population base is, the cost is nearly the same.
(There’s that little bit about the the big carriers subsidizing the rural U.S. phone carriers by having to pay substantially higher rates to terminate calls, but that’s usually small enough to write off or something)
Until the cross-network charges get normalized in the UK (and the rest of the EU), I wouldn’t expect any unlimited plans of any sort there.
PhoneBoy’s last blog post..Why Unlimited Mobile Voice Means Higher ARPU For Carriers
Comment by Terence Eden on 20 February 2008:
The real advantage in this is in billing. Billing systems are notoriously complex and prone to error. If you’re on an unlimited plan, you don’t need an itemised bill, you don’t need a complex billing engine, you don’t need to snail mail or email out bills and you don’t have to spend money on CSA dealing with billing disputes.
Of course, the disadvantage (for phone companies) is that it fuels a price war. Will customers go for a more reliable network for £99pcm or will they go for an unreliable network for £90?
Comment by Pashion on 20 February 2008:
I get 400 mins anytime, any number (excl international and non-geo nums of course), 250 texts and 1gb data for £35 per month and to be honest i haven’t gone over anything other than the texts (and that was twice in 4 years).
lol
I think to leap up to £99 is a bit excessive, i never thought i’d say this but its only a phone
Comment by Ricky C on 20 February 2008:
3UK might surprise us all….. Unless you know something we don’t
Comment by PhoneBoy on 21 February 2008:
@Terence I think billing systems will always be needed. There are always items outside the normal tariffs on people’s bills. Certainly the bills will be much simpler when things go flat-rate.
PhoneBoy’s last blog post..Why Unlimited Mobile Voice Means Higher ARPU For Carriers