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To evaluate the traffic burden of users, we should not only consider the decrease in unit price, but should comprehensively assess the change in total traffic demand.
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Text | Anyway
Recently, some netizens suggested further reducing the national mobile phone card charging standards: "Telecommunications companies are routines, just started to handle card activities, after 2 years and then restored the original price, we telecom cards have been used to, how can each of us easily change the number, and now nationwide, no matter what network operators generally have very little traffic, the number of minutes is very high, and the package fee is very expensive." ”
In this regard, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology responded that it has promoted enterprises to launch various preferential tariff schemes and fee reduction measures, and the next step will be to urge enterprises to improve tariff schemes, improve service quality, and meet the multi-level and diversified needs of the majority of users.
Media inquiries found that many of today's data plans stipulate that the tariff is valid for 2 years or 1 year, and if there is no objection between the two parties, it will be automatically renewed after expiration. But the problem is that the tariff for the first time the consumer applies for the data package is called the discounted preferential price, and after the expiration date, it is restored to the "original price" that is much higher. Moreover, this is often not clearly informed, and it is easy for users to ignore it. If you have a telecom plan, you need to click "See More" on the page to see the age description.
This design, on the one hand, attracts users at seemingly preferential prices, reducing users' resistance to high prices when doing packages; on the other hand, long-term binding to users can be completed through automatic renewal. Because even if the original price is restored, the user may not only be difficult to detect for a while, but also encounter the limitation of the renewal period if the change is made.
After the renewal period, there are also traps waiting for users - last November, the People's Daily reported that it is easy to change and upgrade the package but difficult to downgrade, and there are artificial obstacles. For example, "When upgrading a package, you only need to make a phone call." However, when you want to downshift, you need to go to the business hall to handle it yourself", and when you go to the business hall to handle it, you may also encounter "kicking the ball".
In short, this kind of information asymmetry package is more or less misleading consumers and even digging a pit for consumers.
In fact, improving the transparency of telecommunications services and fees has always been the focus of remediation. For example, in 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a special notice requiring telecommunications business operators to reasonably formulate telecommunications business tariff plans, and should list the tariff structure, charging items, validity periods, etc., so as to be simple and clear, standardized in terms of language, and unambiguous, and at the same time require a "list-style" publicity of tariffs. But for now, it is clear that there are still "dead ends" and "unspoken rules" to be broken in this regard.
In addition, the "content" design of the phone plan is not reasonable enough, and it is also another prominent "slot point". Among them, the most typical is that many packages have long talk time and little traffic, and the practicality is greatly reduced, ignoring the user's just need for traffic.
According to the data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, under the speed increase and fee reduction, the average tariff of mobile traffic has dropped from 139 yuan / G in 2014 to 4 yuan / G in 2020, a drop of more than 95%. However, in the current 5G era, the total demand for traffic by users has been greatly improved, and if the unit price of traffic is directly compared, it may not be able to objectively reflect the real sense of consumers for traffic "fee reduction".
As some netizens joked, "before 1G can be used for 15 days, now 1G can only be used for 15 seconds", even if the unit price of traffic is greatly reduced, but the total traffic consumption has also increased significantly, and the traffic cost paid by the final consumer is likely to rise without falling. Therefore, to evaluate the traffic burden of users, we should not only consider the decline in unit price, but should comprehensively assess the changes in total traffic demand. This also reminds that there must be a new "refinement" to speed up and reduce fees.
The same logic applies to phone plans' allocation of traffic and airtime. At present, many phone plans have the embarrassment of long talk time and low traffic, which is obviously misaligned with the continuous decline in mobile phone call volume and the rapid growth of mobile traffic demand. Obviously, in order to adapt to changes in user needs in a timely manner and re-optimize the allocation of call time and traffic in the package, we can truly enhance the user's real sense of gain.
Some of these consumers are new and some are old. Consumer needs are diverse, but to make users satisfied, the key is nothing more than a little less routine, more sincerity. The telecommunications service market and consumer demand are constantly changing, and the quality of services naturally has room to improve.
Editor| Li Qinyu
Typography | Gan Qiongfang
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