With the advent of the 5G era, major operators have not only accelerated the construction of 5G base stations, but also accelerated the promotion of 5G packages. As smartphones in the market are dominated by 5G phones, many consumers are very interested in 5G networks. Perhaps in order to capture the psychology of consumers "wanting to taste fresh and cheap", operators have launched 5G package activities. Faced with the problem of chaotic package phenomena, People's Daily could not bear to witness it, and urgently asked operators to stop the package routine. China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom have been ordered to reform their packages, and some media outlets have lashed out at the operators for luring consumers, engaging in false propaganda and package tricks. So what are the operator's routines?
Promote before you raise the price
In the package promotion, the netizen believes that the operator has a set of routines. "At the beginning, there was an activity with a package card, and after two years it returned to the original price. This mobile phone number is used to. How can we change the number casually? "This problem is really common in the package promotion of operators. Through the promotion of high-priced packages through short-term offers, and finally the original price is restored, the user's call cost will undoubtedly be higher. A China Unicom user complained that he participated in the activity of reducing the price of the campus card package by 60 yuan, and the original price of the 99 yuan package was only 39 yuan. However, without notice, it is simply dropped back to the original price. "Directly deduct the 99 yuan call fee, call customer service to ask if there are company regulations." Customer service has been dodging this problem, deducting 99 yuan of call charges without knowing it. At the beginning of the processing, China Unicom's business personnel did not say when the fee would expire. ”
5G upgrade package
Now, a large number of 5G mobile phones have been put on the market for sale. In order to allow more 5G mobile phone users to upgrade to 5G traffic plans and let more 5G mobile phone users choose their own mobile cards, the three major operators have launched various 5G traffic plans and built 5G base stations on a large scale. Currently, mobile operators have the largest number of 5G base stations, while China Unicom has the largest 5G package. Recently, China Unicom once again launched two lower-cost 5G traffic upgrade versions, mainly for 4G upgrade 5G mobile phone users. However, as soon as 4G traffic is upgraded to 5G traffic, many users say that the traffic is too expensive, so let's take a look at the 5G upgrade package.
The minimum rate is $19.90 per month, including 20GB of domestic 5G traffic. The first is $19.9 for the first month. Starting next month, the monthly rent is $49. If the user does not cancel the monthly subscription in person, the fee will be automatically renewed. Second, the 5G network speed is limited, the maximum downlink speed peak is 500Mbps, in short, the user has a very good 5G signal, and the actual fastest mobile network speed is 62.5M/s. However, the maximum downlink speed of 5G mobile phones is about 1Gbps, which means that the network speed of China Unicom's 5G upgrade is limited by half. China Unicom's 5G upgrade costs 49.9 yuan per month, starting at 99 yuan the next month. It will contain 30GB of domestic data and a maximum downlink rate of 500Mbps. In contrast, the monthly rent of the second edition of the 5G upgrade has doubled, but the data has not doubled, and the network speed has not improved. According to the official regulations given by China Unicom, not all 4G users can upgrade, the limit is the level of monthly rent, monthly rent to increase, you can apply for 5G upgrades, of course, the most basic premise is to have a 5G mobile phone.
5G package
What's even more irritating is that some of the packages are clearly "selling dog meat" that doesn't live up to its name. Some even deceive consumers. The People's Daily revealed how the three operators used packages and sales of calling cards to deceive consumers. Frequent phone calls or texting. In an era of powerful social tools, people have fewer and fewer opportunities to communicate with each other via text messages and phone calls. If you look closely at everyday life, the most frequent calls are made by customer service providers from the three major carriers. Of course, they don't think we're alone and use phone calls and texting to ease our boredom. It's really about facilitating the business and letting's upgrade the traffic packages again and again. Over time, there will be a subtle effect on the owner of the phone, which may upgrade the traffic package under the impulse.
The lie of the super-multi-data plan, the operator promises to open a certain package to enjoy the benefits of hundreds of G of traffic. It looks like a temptation, when you spend money only to find out that the so-called big traffic is actually designated traffic... For some applications only. You spend a lot of money on the package, but you can only use it in a limited environment.
Reach the speed limit
In fact, the so-called "unlimited data plan" is not really unlimited data, but "speed limit". Take China Mobile's high-traffic plan as an example. Usually, the downlink speed of the phone is limited to 1Mbps when the traffic exceeds 40G, and the speed limit is 128kbps when the traffic exceeds 100GB. The speed limit of China Telecom and China Unicom should be higher. In general, the speed limit is 3.1mbps when over 40Gb and 1mbps when exceeding 100GB.
Due to the speed limit, a simple calculation will reveal that even if your phone is consuming traffic 24 hours a day, there must be an upper limit to the amount of traffic that can be used within a month of the speed limit, and it is impossible to achieve truly unlimited traffic. In other words, the "unlimited data" package of the three major operators is not worthy of the name, and even suspects false propaganda. Therefore, since September 2019, the three major operators have uniformly removed the "data limit" package and changed it to a "data payment" package, that is, after the traffic in the mobile phone package is used up, it is not capped at 3 yuan or 5 yuan and 1GB.
Theoretically, 4G network speeds are very fast. Under normal circumstances, it can exceed 50Mbps, and 4G+ can reach 100Mbps. However, the download speed of 4G networks is generally only 20MBps, and the peak at night is even less than 10Mbps. The reason is that too many people use 4G to access the Internet at the same time, and the bandwidth of 4G base stations is fixed. The more people who go online, the lower the network speed assigned to everyone. As a result, everyone now feels that 4G networks are getting slower and slower. Since all 5G packages are launched after September 2019, a "pay-as-you-go" model must be adopted. In addition, according to the operator's regulations, 4G users who are still using the "bulk speed limit" package will automatically switch to the "volume payment" mode once they upgrade to the 5G plan. This has led to some 4G users being reluctant to upgrade to a 5G package for "unlimited traffic." We all know that 5G networks are very fast. If you use it to watch 4k 60 frames of Ultra HD video, you may consume a few gigabytes of traffic in an hour. With high-intensity traffic, 5G, which is usually 40Gb or 60GB, may run out in a matter of days. Of course, some netizens will say that it is impossible to watch videos with 5G all the time, and the traffic may last for a month. But the point is that 5G is characterized by fast network speeds. If the requirements for network speed are not high, why not use 4G directly?
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has also responded to the issue of packages and charges for operators. Previously, in November 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also issued a notice requiring operators to optimize the display mode settings of tariff packages. The circular points out that basic telecommunications enterprises should provide tariff packages sold in the public market and preferential tariff packages for the elderly and the disabled within their business halls, handheld halls, network halls, tariff areas and agency channels. Comprehensively organize the names of the sales packaging and avoid ambiguity. Timely remind users of the use of traffic in the package, and reasonably set the unit price of out-of-package traffic. Under the supervision of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, many difficulties of users in the package are expected to be further solved.