Recently, a number of media have criticized telecom operators' daily rental cards (daily billing packages), the main crime is: free traffic cards are not really free of flow, so they have incurred high fees.
In fact, the daily rental card launched in November 2016 has become a chicken rib last year, and the promotion of the three major telecom operators has weakened significantly. This is because:
1, I analyzed a few years ago (when the average monthly traffic of mobile phone users was less than 2GB ~ 5GB), the daily rental card is beneficial to some users with stable traffic usage habits, especially the maximum daily rental card once contained 200GB of directional traffic per month, how to use it can not be used up. The monthly consumption of daily rental cards is between low-cost monthly packages and high-end packages, and the three form a good substitute. However, in the past six months, the average monthly traffic of mobile phone users has reached 14GB, the targeted traffic has also been unified to 30GB, and the monthly fee of the monthly rental card is more than 50 yuan, which is high for most users.
2. When the 5G package was launched, the three major telecom operators straightened out the foreign investment fee of the package, and unified the package foreign investment fee of all the new monthly fee packages to a maximum of 5 yuan / GB, which greatly reduced the advantages of the daily rental card.
3. Branches and subsidiaries of operators in various provinces and cities, according to local characteristics, have launched low-cost monthly fee packages with equally attractive prices, and their tariffs cover the range from less than 10 yuan to 6 or 70 yuan, and the daily rental card is only a subset. And the operator's business hall, the promotion of these local monthly packages is greater.
4. With the implementation of policies such as number portability, it is becoming easier and easier for users to change packages (or even change operators), which makes it easier for users to "escape" from daily rental cards.
The three major telecom operators have seen this trend, and have recently modified the daily billing mode of such packages to a monthly billing model (5 yuan / GB outside the package). For example, the daily rental card that was first launched - China Unicom Tencent King Cardqi now has no 19 yuan in the package tariff for sale, but from 29 yuan (10 yuan is a secondary card tariff, not a complete package).
(Source: China Unicom official website - Tariff Zone)
Its promotional interface is also from 29 yuan:
The new "King Card 2.0" was changed to a monthly billing model, with only 30GB of exclusive traffic in the 29 yuan file, while the 59 yuan file added 10GB of general traffic and 300 minutes of voice, and the package was discounted. (Note one detail, "Tencent" has gradually been weakened.) ）
China Telecom's response to the main force of China Unicom's Tencent King Card, the Star Card (2022 version), has also changed to a monthly billing model of 5 yuan / GB for package foreign capital.
China Mobile's new version of the treasure card has also been changed to 5 yuan and 1GB of universal traffic outside the package.
The new packages launched by the three major telecom operators still occupy the central monthly consumption space of the original daily rental cards, but they have changed from daily billing to monthly billing, which shows that operators still hope that this new category of monthly billing cards will become the "backbone" of the package. However, as mentioned earlier, local operators already have monthly billing packages, which also extend to this price range. The difference is that the monthly billing package of the original daily rental card deformation also contains 30GB of monthly directed traffic, while the monthly billing package of local operators contains more general traffic, but does not contain or only contains very little directed traffic. Users can choose according to their usage habits.
Under this type of package, telecom operators also have lower-priced entry packages:
For example, China Telecom has a worry-free card for a monthly fee of 5 yuan:
For another example, China Mobile has an 8 yuan free-flow package:
The three major telecom operators also have filial piety cards or love cards for elderly users, which have a very low monthly fee and include certain amounts of traffic.