Philip Khor

Rationale for Celcom’s iPhone Data allocation is quite puzzling!

celcom iphone data

I have quite shallow understanding of pricing in terms of Marketing but here are my thoughts:

For the i68 plan, why offer 800 MB of data when Digi and Maxis are offering 1GB?

Of the three comparison tables, it looks like the winner for the most CONFUSING table of information goes to Celcom!

Celcom appeals to a certain demographics, which is quite facinated when they’re presented with ALL the information. Ok, I might be overstereotyping here, but think about it. It is usually the manager and business people who love factsheets before they buy.

I’d say Maxis plans are the most cunning. Pinch penny users go for Digi naturally because of their lower numbers, but if you consider living out your entire 12 or 24 month contract with a carrier, it is neck-and-neck between Digi and Maxis. As a Digi user myself, I’d give Maxis a shot if I were to re-commit to another smartphone contract. Digi just plain suck. The network sucks — data is unavailable all the time.

Back to the original argument, why does Celcom offer 800 MB?

The answer (I speculate) is that … their demographics would think 800 MB is greater than 1 GB.

And guess what, people will ask this to their sales people when buying the phone “Eh, why Maxis one gee-bee, and Siau-com got 800 emm-bee?!” More opportunity for sales people to confuse, make a pitch and close the deal.

Smart move, Celcom. Hats off.

Links to iphone page: Celcom | Maxis | Digi

I was browsing through this forum post where people were complaining of Maxis’ infamous product BillShock(tm)!!

After you finish your 500 MB monthly quota, you will be charged RM 10 per megabyte under 10 year old rates (remember GPRS?) So confirm in no time you’ll touch your maximum RM 250/month on top of what you normally pay for your phone bills.

At Digi, they just throttle you to 128kbit/s which is usable for almost everything (except YouTube) and no extra charge.

To demonstrate this phenomena, check out my bills for the past 4 months!

Cost — Billing Date

- 78.41 12-10-2010
6.46     12-11-2010
- 1.74     12-12-2010
- 3.21     12-01-2011

It has all been in the negative. I’m on the iDigi 88 plan with super duper promotion with the iPhone bundle. There’s some roll-over credit remaining on Digi!

Shelling out my Calc.exe , if you assume it’s rm 88 for phone bill (+5% tax), my iPhone purchasing cost would be RM 1450 in zero installment plan.

I think I got an awesome deal. Back in my Sony Ericsson k850 days, I paid RM 88 for Data on top of a RM 50 commitment plan. And the iPhone experience has been quite awesome (sans the reception issues in certain areas)!

My Data usage for December was 2GB. Oct / Nov was just tipped over 1+GB. No BillShock for me!

On a sidenote, I am happy and overjoyed to have contributed to this statistic:

Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached a record 16.24 million, up 86 percent from the year-ago quarter

The Nokias 5800 Express Music was the first popular phone with a Digital Compass (Magnetometer) built in. Basically, on that phone, its sole function is to assist the GPS to know which direction you are heading.

Apple developers went one step further.

This is the map overlay feature, combining camera, GPS and the compass. The App will be available for US$1.80 and one day it will eventually come to Malaysia.

Hmm, anybody have Rm 2000 for an iPhone 3GS from Maxsucks?