FOCUS: Operators see clients happy with huge data combos, keep unlimited data as niche offer

By Yekaterina Yezhova

MOSCOW, Aug 10 (PRIME) -- Russia is no longer a country with the cheapest unlimited data tariffs, which exert excessive pressure on networks and abandoned by every fifth state in 2020. The country’s mobile operators say they have no plans to get rid of such offers while witnessing a rising popularity of bundles with generous data packages.

“The coronavirus pandemic and the follow-up lockdown did not hit operators’ incomes so much as they hurt infrastructure and networks, load on which increased dramatically, by 20–40%. It was the main reason of almost every fifth country in the world to have rejected unlimited data tariffs,” information and research agency Content Review’s head Sergei Polovnikov said in a study.

“It should be noted that operators in most of the countries introduced bundles with gigantic, but still limited data for the subscribers with high demand and readiness to pay for it. In our papers, we’ve repeatedly underlined the destructive impact on the market of unlimited data tariffs and their use as a marketing tool of price dumping.”

For the research, Content Review studied data tariffs in 50 countries with the highest gross-domestic product and analyzed offers of 136 mobile operators.

“Russia’s position in the rating of the countries with the lowest price of 1GB did not change (since December 2019 till July), while in the rating of the countries with the cheapest unlimited data, Russia moved from the first place to the third one, now following Kazakhstan and Poland,” the research read.

On the global scale, the average price of 1GB went up to 188.4 rubles in July from 187 rubles in December 2019 due to the launch of 5G as the operators either charge extra for connection to the new generation networks or hike all tariffs.

In Russia, the average price of 1GB fell to 31.6 rubles from 37.3 rubles as the operators offer bundles with heavy data packages amid growing demand for the mobile Internet.

The world’s average price of tariffs with unlimited data jumped to 3,981.1 rubles from 3,181 rubles. “In January–June, operators in nine countries rejected tariffs with unlimited data, and tariffs spiked in the rest 37 countries that kept such offers,” the Content Review research read.

In Russia, the average price of an unlimited data tariff advanced to 887.5 rubles from 602.5 rubles as the service, which was affordable and used for marketing promotion, was reclassified as premium.

“The bulk of subscribers are more than happy with packages of mobile data, and unlimited data tariffs are turning into niche products for those who download really huge volumes of data. MTS does not plan to abandon unlimited data offers,” mobile operator MTS’ press secretary Alexei Merkutov told PRIME.

“The most popular offers at MTS are bundles with airtime and mobile data.”

Mobile operator VimpelCom, working under brand Beeline, is not against unlimited data tariffs either. “But they should not be the drivers and the sole factor of choice for clients. Their price should be economically justified. In this sense, bundles, whose components depend on the volume of consumption, are optimal,” an operator spokesperson said.

With expansion of unlimited data offers, data traffic rises faster than revenue and in a non-linear way, which results in excessive load on networks, Daria Kolesnikova, a spokesperson for mobile operator T2 RTK Holding, working under brand Tele2, told PRIME.

“In Tele2’s product range, the unlimited data offer is presented as a niche one, popular only among a part of clients. We believe the existing bundles can satisfy any need of clients in data,” she said.

“As digital services penetrate the daily life, more data traffic is required, and packages with an impressive volume of data are enjoying rising popularity. For example, in the Moscow Region, where Tele2 has traditionally the most digital-oriented audience, bundles with data from 15 to 40 GB are the bestsellers.”

Content Review said that in the bulk of the countries that got rid of unlimited data, the operators offer tariffs with generous data packages from 40 to 150 GB.

(73.6376 rubles – U.S. $1)

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