It’s no secret that TeliaSonera isn’t doing too well in Finland, so they recently made some interesting changes in an attempt to improve the situation. These include raising the call prices significantly, especially for short calls. Now that’s a surefire way to get more customers, right? I think they were trying to hide the price hike by announcing a set of 3G services (like a mobile TV-pilot) at the same time, but as predicted, all the media is focusing on is the hike in call prices.
Finland recently announced that it will allow subsidizing of 3G-terminals, and Elisa, Saunalahti and Sonera were quick to announce their plans. While the plans have been introduced on the companies’ websites and many blogs, I thought it’d be interesting to do a comparison. So let’s take a hypothetical 3G user, who could be characterized as a power user. He/she is looking to get a new phone along with the subscription and doesn’t mind the 24-month contracts. The N70 seems to fit the bill quite well, so that’s the chosen phone. The monthly usage of our hypothetical person is the following:
- Normal voice calls: 450mins / month
- Video calls: 50mins / month
- SMS messages: 100 SMS / month
- MMS Messages: 30 MMS / month
- Data usage: 100 MB / month (optional)
So how do things pan out among the three operators? Check out the table below which lists the total cost for the 24 months, including the N70 terminal:
NOTES: the Sonera prices do not take into account the call start fees of 4.9 cents per call, nor do any numbers take into account the minimum call charges. Also, the data plans were the cheapest available for 100MB of monthly traffic – Sonera and Saunalahti offer a 100MB/month packages, while the Elisa package is the unlimited package.
I think the verdict here is quite clear: TeliaSonera’s offering not only feels bad, it is bad. And I tend to disagree with TS’s Rautalinko who claims that users don’t want packages – never underestimate the consumers’ desire to prevent surprises in the phone bill. And in addition to that, the Saunalahti plan in question here is essentially an unlimited-everything plan at 3,000 minutes of calls & 3,000 videocalls and SMS+MMS messages each.
