HOW DIGICEL IS RIPPING YOUR HARD EARNED KINA
by MARK POWIA
Below table shows prepaid data plan pricing
for both Digicel and Bmobile. A few
points to note are:
In bundle charging refers
to the per megabyte rate that a customers will be charged if they buy a
specific prepaid data plan. So for example if I buy 1 Day Pass from Bmobile
which is K3 for 50MB, I will be charged at 6t per MB when I browse the
internet. If I buy a 1 Day Pass from Digicel at K3 for 60MB, I will be charged
at 5t per MB.
Bmobile & Digicel both
charge by billing block, this is not the same as the charge per megabyte.
Bmobile charges 0.03t/10KB while Digicel charges 19t/400KB. What does this mean
for prepaid data consumers? Before we get to the answer, let’s explain how data
units are calculated.
1024KB is equal to 1MB and
1024MB is equal to 1GB. Now the billing block charging means that if a customer
switches on their data connection on their smartphone and initiates s a data
session of 5KB only, if you are on Digicel you will be charged 19t because any
session less than or equal to 400KB is charged at 19t. If you are Bmobile, you
will be charged 3t since the session is less than or equal to 10KB. So if you
do not buy a data plan and you are browsing the internet with your own credit,
this is how you will be charged:
o
Bemobile: 1024/10 = 102.4.
Multiply this with 3t and your actual charge of 1MB will be K3.07
o
Digicel: 1024/400 = 2.56. .
Multiply this with 19t and your actual charge of 1MB will be 0.4864 or 49t
Now you may say Digicel is
cheaper however if you are browsing using a data plan, it’s the opposite. At a billing block of 400KB you will be
charged faster compared to a billing block of 10KB. This is why consumer’s data
plans deplete faster on Digicel network and people wonder why it happens. Every
time you start a new session 400K is deducted from your data bundle, this will
happen even though you just did a post on FB and use up 30KB, Digicel’s billing
system will still deduct 400KB.
Digicels marketing team
are smart, they say get more for less but they are actually depleting your data
very fast because of the 400KB billing block. This info is available on the
website except that people don’t understand what it means.
Bmobile Vodafone
|
|||
FEE (K)
|
Bundle Size (MB)
|
In bundle Charge (K)
|
Validity
|
3
|
50
|
0.06
|
24hrs
|
5
|
70
|
0.07
|
3 Days
|
10
|
150
|
0.07
|
7 Days
|
20
|
350
|
0.06
|
14 Days
|
80
|
1536
|
0.05
|
30 Days
|
225
|
5120
|
0.04
|
30 Days
|
375
|
10240
|
0.04
|
30 Days
|
Digicel Normal Plans
|
||||||||
FEE (K)
|
Bundle Size (MB)
|
In bundle Charge (K)
|
Validity
|
|||||
3
|
60
|
0.05
|
24hrs
|
|||||
10
|
190
|
0.05
|
3 Days
|
|||||
20
|
450
|
0.04
|
7 Days
|
|||||
30
|
700
|
0.04
|
14 Days
|
|||||
65
|
1500
|
0.04
|
30 Days
|
|||||
80
|
1945.6
|
0.04
|
15 Days
|
|||||
200
|
5120
|
0.04
|
30 Days
|
|||||
300
|
9728
|
0.03
|
30 Days
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Digicel Social Plans
|
||||||||
FEE (K)
|
Bundle Size (MB)
|
In bundle Charge (K)
|
Validity
|
Comments
|
||||
4
|
60
|
0.07
|
24hrs
|
Comes with FREE browsing of FB, Twitter, Instagram & PNGLoop
|
||||
12
|
190
|
0.06
|
3 Days
|
Comes with FREE browsing of FB, Twitter, Instagram & PNGLoop
|
||||
23
|
450
|
0.05
|
7 Days
|
Comes with FREE browsing of FB, Twitter, Instagram & PNGLoop
|
||||
35
|
700
|
0.05
|
14 Days
|
Comes with FREE browsing of FB, Twitter, Instagram & PNGLoop
|
||||
70
|
1500
|
0.05
|
30 Days
|
Comes with FREE browsing of FB, Twitter, Instagram & PNGLoop
|