Hotlink 'Bagus' calling

MAXIS Bhd, the country's largest mobile operator, has launched its new prepaid plan that will address its weakest link and to make its customers stay longer with the package.

The plan's motivation is simple - to offer the lowest rates in all five categories namely voice calls, text messages, Internet surfing, international direct dialling (IDD) and roaming.

Maxis chief executive officer Sandip Das said the plan is part of its efforts to capture more market share in two target segments that it is "not so strong" in - migrant workers and tourists.

"In fact, we believe the new plan can help us address the needs of all segments. The migrant workers will find our IDD rates appealing, and tourists who want to use mobile data would find our flexible mobile data plans attractive too," he said.

Hotlink Bagus users will get to make phone calls to a fellow Maxis user for 24 sen a minute, and non- Maxis user for 36 sen a minute. However, if they have more than RM10 balance in their prepaid account, these calls would cost only 20 sen a minute and 30 sen a minute, respectively.

Users can also sign up for daily and weekly data plans. Plans are flexible whereby users can choose to pay RM2 a day for 100MB of data, RM5 a day for 500MB of data, or RM8 a week for 100MB of data and RM12 a week for 250MB of data.

There is also a Bagus 5 Pass - which gives users 10MB of data for free for three days, during which they could make phone calls to fellow Maxis users for 12 sen a minute and non-Maxis users for 18 sen a minute. On-Net text messages will cost one sen each, while off-Net text messages will cost 10 sen each. All customers need to do is to subscribe to the three-day plan for RM5.

Analysts, when contacted, agreed that the new prepaid plan is attractive, but would not spark a price war.

"It is a good plan, price is good. It's near the tipping point where you can see a big surge in data take-up rate. It's near, but not there yet. I believe there's still room for further reduction, especially on the weekly data passes," said an analyst from a foreign brokerage.

"It will definitely help the company to capture more customers in the migrant worker and tourist segments, but it won't spark a price war," the analyst said.

The analyst added that a price war may only happen when it costs prepaid mobile users less than RM25 a month to sign up for data plans.

Whether there is a price war remains to be seen, but one thing for sure is that Maxis is expected to see some margin reduction due to the lower call rates it is offering.

Sandip believes that a squeeze in margin is tolerable, as long as the revenue growth is able to compensate for the reduction in margins.

Besides targeting tourist and migrant worker segments, Sandip also hopes that its prepaid customers using smart phones will take the opportunity to switch to Hotlink Bagus' data plans.

Currently, Maxis has some 14 million subscribers of which 10.6 million are Hotlink users and 3.4 million postpaid users. From the total base, 3.7 million customers use smart phones and 60 per cent of them are prepaid users.

By Goh Thean Eu of btimes.com.my