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How long can you enjoy the
"Unlimited"? A few days ago a friend of mine called me and said:
"Hi, Nenko! Now we can talk as long as you wish. I just switched to the new MCI
Neighborhood unlimited plan and I can spend all my free time on the phone
talking with friends and family!"
"OK", I replied, "Let's talk then."
And we really spent some joyful minutes happy with the feeling of the unlimited freedom. Then my friend said:
"Oh, well, I am tired of all this endless talk. May be it's time to go and do some work now!"
When we hang up I gave this conversation some deep thought.
How could these companies afford to give something for free? The industry is going through the deepest
crisis ever. Anyway they do it!
Then I took a pencil and a
piece of paper, threw some figures and made some calculations. You will not believe me how surprised
I was when I finished. It turned out that the "unlimited" was
quite a bit more expensive than what we all were used to think.
Here is what I found out:
ALL flat rate (unlimited) plans are priced above the AVERAGE
usage a residential customer does per month. The "unlimited" thing makes the customer feel they get something for free and during
the first month or two the customer will speak longer on the phone as
usually, "to the full extent of the unlimited". Then the usage drops back to the averages that the customer had on the phone before changing
his company with one with an unlimited plan. This show the statistics
about the average long distance customer!
Here I will give you an example to explain what I mean:
I am a SBC/Ameritech local service customer and use
CogniWorld for my
long distance calls.
With SBC/Ameritech local service I pay 23.66 USD
flat per month including two features of my choice. My monthly average long distance usage with CogniWorld is around 11.99 USD
per month (including USF tax and all other taxes).
So my total calling costs
(local + long distance) are averagely 35.65 USD per month.
With MCI I would pay 49.99
USD/mo, not including USF tax and a bunch of other fees! What happens in the months when I have less long distance
calls? I would still pay MCI the full 49.99 USD/mo (not including taxes).
Compare:
SBC/Ameritech + CogniWorld long distance = $23.66+$11.99 = $35.65/mo (all fees & taxes included)
MCI Neighbourhood all unlimited plan = $49.99 / mo (not including
taxes).
In conclusion if I were to switch to MCI bundle I would spend 14.34 USD more per month than if I stayed with my current local phone
company and chose one of the small long distance companies, offering discount service
with the same quality of calls as the big ones (they use the same network
providers) and much better customer service, in case of course if I continued to fall
into my monthly average calling pattern. And this eventually happens, as I
explained above, after the first several months when one starts using
an unlimited plan.
Now I hope you understand the "catch" with the "unlimited" offer.
So if you decide to change your current long distance or local company,
do your homework first. We have developed a Comparison Tool that will greatly help you compare small long distance companies at a glance.
If you need DSL service however, then
MCI bundle (local + long distance + DSL) may be worth considering.
Sincerely,
Nenko Antonov
Owner of www.LDKiosk.com
Looking forward to serve you well ...
All rights reserved! Reprinting of this article is allowed with permission only!
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