Digicel rates & Phone prices

[disciple]

is not a matter of workin for tstt...

the launch has been, for lack of a better word.. underwhelming.. apart from the 'frustration with tstt' factor.. who really sayin 'ah boy! i goin to digicel cuz this is the real flick...'?  no one.. i eh hear nobody sayin that they have been won over by digicel on its own merits.... and no one i spoke to has been impressed by this launch..


the phone selection is what's to be expected.. average, with one or two decent fones ( pebl, razr) perhaps in time it would improve, but maybe not..

rates , if you really think about it, couldnt have gone any lower.. i dunno what people were expecting with this, but when you look at other countries ( like the UK, where  tmobile is 20p per minute.. a lil over TT2.00 , or the states where they are  40c.. around  TT2.50)
we already had okay rates ( the US had some better packages, but again.. the size of the market made it viable)

convert what we was payin before..    TT.75 per minute.. around 12c US per min.. we didn't have it that bad

what i lookin forward to is a change in attitude from the tstt staff... since they are no longer the only game in town, i hope they try to be more efficient, courteous and accountable, cuz man have choice now

the cell service itself... well. we have a catch 22 there, where we want better call quality/coverage, but we don't want the cell towers in our areas

[Gambitt]

Why exactly would we be looking at the rates in other countries? T&T = measly 1.2 million (i figure is more but das what the CSO say). A single city in them countries you call have more people than T&T. And a single company in dem countries covering more than one city.  So they going to have to pay to keep up more and better equipment than the junk we been using down here.

And yes I could call it junk because they now change a box by where I living that older than some of your uncles.
It wouldnt have surprise me if they did see Mr Grey signature inside the box.

The launch wasn't a wow because of the drastic measures TSTT has been taking over the last couple of months. And by drastic I mean a 33% reduction in the price of a phone OVERNIGHT that just happened to coincide with the opening of the competition. Couple that with suddenly affordable phones, and the giving away of what must amount to several million dollars every quarter in "free additional bonus topup incentive dollars" (the logic behind the giving away of these minutes was - "we know the service doh always work, and that you couldnt use your phone, so in recompense we give you extra money, to put on your phone, to spend on a service that we admit, doh work so good!"

The thing that most dissappointed me was that they were saying I had to buy a phone to get Digicell. No sims on sale for 3-4 months. I'm guessing that if they had just sold sims they would have gotten a much bigger response, and based on the size of the customer base they could then start offering cheaper phones to existing customer looking to trade up.


If it wasnt for that I would be a digicell customer right now. Now that I have to drop more money for a phone I wont use, I will wait and see. Some of the rates do seem marginally cheaper than TSTT's (based on my usage) and I'd switch sims manually to capitalise on that, until I get one of them multi sims or the ghost sim adapter someone posted on another thread.

And dont get tie up with the sheer importance of the "fed up with tstt" factor.

[Crixx_Creww]

Doh underestimate de FED UP WIT MC MC MC MCC MCCCCCCCCC TSSTTTT factor

blasted f.....

anyways lol

de sims will come soon enuff
lol
i get one from my ex, no scene.

[Gambitt]

Ent? I also want to see what laqtel plan is, but they sticking. I figure the fact that they not going GSM is probably gonna hurt them as much as it helps out the customers. It seems to me like yuh gonna have[b/] to buy a fone from them.

I still figure they should be selling them sims without the fone.

[disciple]

actually gambit.. in those countries, with more people, what i was trying to illustrate is that since they have a larger customer base, they have a larger revenue stream, and therefore could afford to have lower prices . is economies of scale...   more people paying for the service , so it is viable for them to have low prices to be competetive.. yes they also have to maintain equipment and costs will be up as well, but the income from the customers is what i was focussing on..it eh go totally be absorbed by the cost to maintain the network. and also, when you buyin the equipment, there are also discounts for buyin in large quantities

we sayin 'tstt expensive' etc .. but compared to what? to whom? where?  so i gave an example of rates in two first world countries with liberalised markets....  there is a cost attached to everything.. we can't just expect stuff to be free ..  also, just cus is first world countries/larger markets, doesn't necessarily mean they have the latest and greatest in tech/best prices.....

as telecoms equipment goes,  our GSM network ( though seemingly underpowered) is  fairly recent..   when a phone company gets behind a technology, it is for at least a 10 years.. remember it costs in the billions to set up/maintain....  infrastructure is not like a PC where you upgrade every 6 mths.. you try to maintain what you have till it is inadequate for your needs, unable to repair , or is at the end of the life cycle you set.( sometimes a 15 years)



they not gonna sell the sims just so yet, because they WANT to sell u a contract.. or a sim-locked prepaid phone so you gonna stay with them ( lots of people won't bother to unlock...... you already have the phone.. best you use it, and keep with them.. )  ... they here to MAKE money off people head.. providing you a service is just a side effect of this......  they wouldnt have come here if they didn't think there wasn't money to be made....




as one of their selling points, digicel promises to reimburse you up to a minute for dropped calls.. not cuz they plan to drop your calls, but dude, is inevitable when you dealin with cell technology..  they gonna try to minimise it, and hopefully it eh go be often.. but is waves you dealin with ( is there an engineer in the forum?)


i not underestimatin the tstt hate factor one bit..in fact, i have full respect for it...   everybody have a story where tstt hit them the shaft.. and thas a great reason to go digicel......as i posted earlier, digicel will get a decent customer base ....finally we doh have to take nonsense from tstt if we don't want to..

sidenote.. why don't you just buy one of the cheaper prepaids, and toss the phone? is 149 for the cheapest handset, not so? does it include a sim, or do you have to pay extra for the sim?



what i  sayin is that the launch buss.. people had unrealistic expectations of what digicel would bring.. .you woulda swear digicel was blonde ,had blue eyes, and walked on water...

but recognise that tstt tryin to improve, and in certain areas, they have..    we say they ridiculous with the rates, they drop rates..  we say they sell their phones to expensive, they drop  the prices and offer some for free..  we say the service poor, they attempt to build more cell sites ( and get protested)
they have become competive.. and the real benefactor , is the customer


laqtel's cdma solution, techwise, will be better..  yuh gettin more bandwidth on it, better call quality, less susceptible to dropped calls, it easier to set up/ maintain( and they gonna pass that cost onto the customer) and CDMA phones are really wet ( it big in japan, korea, etc..  man gettin tv on they phone an ting),

but laqtel in a lousy position right now..timing is everything when you launching a product..... they broke ( it was in yesterday papers.. ) and the canadian partner they had, ride out...so things eh lookin too hot for them in june..

[EmpireKing]

Digicel are selling prepaid SIM cards for $100 with 50dollars worth of credit....

Anybody know exactly wen d WAP with BMobile/TsTT gonnan start bak workkin

[Gambitt]

actually gambit..

Yes, I appreciate that they have a larger customer base and that economies of scale can take place reducing costs. What I was pointing out is that with the larger customer base also comes significantly larger costs, equipment, personel, interconnection with multiple companies ( this can be so high that many fone companies actually refuse to cover roaming charges in various states) etc.. And that with the competition they cannot afford to have lame a$$ equipment that does not meet the demand, or they will go broke. They dont go broke because they have more customers, but because they have to pay costs.

The equipment that they buy can be bought at a discount in large quantities, but you seem to be skipping over the fact that it HAS to be bought in large quantites and that this means that you HAVE to pay LARGE amounts of money in the first place. Lets be honest Laqtel is bitching and moaning because of the amount of money they dropped so far. That's chicken feed to start up a cellular network in foreign, because the scale is vastly larger.

You gave a comparison to rates in another country. But you havent shown those rates as a factor of the average household income. Cost of living is not the same here as there. It's like saying a coke costs more there than here. What does that have to do with anything else? The only thing we can really compare it to is the other cell companies in T&T and you are right, digicell is more expensive so we say "it costs too much". We can also compare TSTT's rates to how much we think we ought to be spending and once again we say "it costs too much"

Yuh saying people had unrealistic expectations. Study when the interconnection was supposed to happen. Last year. Now look at the prices and the rates. Dont look so bad if we was still in 2k5 ent? Looks a lot worse if the company that has been stickking and stalling on the interconnectivity, so much that the govt had to get involved and threaten them, suddenly starts offering phones for a reducted rate. Especially on the day your new company supposed to launch. Ent? Boss do you even realise how much our expectations for cell service has changed over the last few months? So is no surprise people got a bit of a shock. Yesterday they tell me I cyah get the sim alone. Now they saying I could get it for only $50 (free minutes is a rebate so.. 100-50). By next week prices of everything will start dropping.

The gsm thing was a mistake I  figure. The service has been sucky. The worldwide roaming only applies to some very specific areas, that's why I'm really interested to see what Laqtel has to say. Is like betamax all over again. Laqtel at least seems to be saying they will offer something that will work. But I doh trust Joe not to buss price in our tail.


Somehow I figure that the whole dropped call and one dollar back is the least of my worries. And I figure (just because I am[/b] biased) that a lot of the problems will be with the connection to Bmobile phones. Why?  because everyone's Bmobile fone wasnt working today from in work, no matter what number u was trying to call.


Reply to sidenote: I am a cheap bastard. I probably will end up getting the phone as a backup but i really dont like the idea of paying that extra $ for stuff I doh want. 


I not saying tstt not trying to improve. They been doing a lot. They cutting people like is a barbershop. Less overpaid workers, more free calls for Gambitt. (Now if only they would fire the remainder of the ignorant ones and the overpaid managers everyting would work for a change.)  Also more cell towers as you say, significantly better coverage than a few years ago (even if the map is a stink lie). I dunno if I would describe their behaviour as competitive, but probably "anticompetitive a la Bill Gates."

If you figure they not going to try to shaft Digicell, you have more faith in them than I do. And when they do that, doh forget who suffering, the customer.


BTW is it not terrible that they had all that ruckus going on while the poor kiddies were trying to do their exams? And is it not ironic that the system crashed today, yuh doh feel that will encourage man to switch to digicell? 

[disciple]

i concede, gambitt, that your comment about cost of living is extremely relevant, and  that a direct parallel cannot be made..

but as in all things, we always compare to see how we rate...is human..  like if i lookin for a something, i'd search for it on amazon first , and see how much it retails for there, and  the price it's offered for down here is too far off( cost+mark up+ duty+ hassle factor)  is always of interest...

but i admit again , a direct parallel should not  be made


yes, the equipment has to be bought in large quantities, and is large sums of money we talkin about... but remember, is large companies we talkin about as well.. cingular etc , a lot of these companies are fragments of the old AT&T monopoly ( though there are many small, regional cell providers). with enough capital to handle it, and the ability to raise capital if need be.... (e.g. sprint is worth US77 Billion)


with regards to lame equipment, a lot of US providers still maintain older obsolete analog and TDMA equipment, alongside their GSM installations... some have moved on to other platforms like UMTS ( the successor to GSM) , and some haven't made the move as yet.. competetion or no, is if it in their business plan or migration path...



gsm on the whole doesn't suck... is just tstt implementation doesn't have the capacity to handle the customer traffic..     they made a huge mistake by pushing people off the TDMA platform so quickly, and onto GSM without having enough cell sites to improve coverage, also, as one of their spokespersons said, they weren't  able to utilise another spectrum ( 800Mghz) to handle indoor usage, which is why people cah get indoor service..  they shoulda sort that out long ago..

i dunno if you remember that the TDMA network , at one point, sucked ballz as well.. esp on 'free call sunday' when sometimes you couldn;t get through even if your life depended on it?  when people migrated to gsm, tdma was clear as a bell, and few dropped calls if any..

the cellular roaming, applies to a good few places
here's a listing by country and network that tstt has agreements with
http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/roa_ttts.shtml
can't say first hand if it works as promised, cuz i doh travel with muh phone

gsm runs the route in europe and the states, while cdma is big in asia.. but changing, since cdma is a much newer tech

here are some figures, though they 2 years old
http://www.gsmworld.com/news/statistics/substats.shtml

with regards to tstt business tactics.. is just that. business... is not like digicel come to hold they hands and go for a walk.. digicel come to buss them up too..lol
like what they did in almost every other territory to c & w..  they all out to make money.. and wherever digicel can cut them, bet your bottom dollar they will..

i admit i wish the prices were lower , sooner, though... and yes they dragged their heels on the interconnection, but as tstt ceo said, they not bound by law to cooperate

the gov't had to intervene.. but i think that was all grandcharge.... the government is the largest shareholderin tstt, and the chairmain is a politcal appointee... i think they were stallin to give laqtel a lifeline ( laqtel being a enterprise owned by prominent gov't cronies)
if digicel launched last november, and got firmly entrenched, i doh think laqtel would have much of a chance to go beyond a small niche
but thas just my conspiracy theory...



i agree with you also, on not buyin more than you need, but one spare phone is always an asset; my cell got soaked in the 'tsunami' last year, salvaged the sim, but the phone was toast..( literally.. battery shorted out.. smelt like burnt cookies)..
doh mind i doh live off muh phone, the spare phone came in handy...

but waste not, want not..



i not familiar with the ruckus with the kiddies  you talkin bout tho, so yuh go hadda enlighten me on that

[38_CalibuR]

all of u sound like u work for tstt

[EmpireKing]

Does anyone know wen WAP is gonna start bak working

[38_CalibuR]

when u pay for it

[Gambitt]

yes, the equipment has to be bought in large quantities, and is large sums of money we talkin about... but remember, is large companies we talkin about as well.. cingular etc , a lot of these companies are fragments of the old AT&T monopoly ( though there are many small, regional cell providers). with enough capital to handle it, and the ability to raise capital if need be.... (e.g. sprint is worth US77 Billion)

And they have investors who are willing to put up more money too so they can raise that kinda capital. Of course borrowing those huge sums and having to pay back for them means that the cost is passed on to the customer. Now I'm no expert on banking policies in either T&T or yankeeland but I'm sure they have roles to play.

with regards to lame equipment, a lot of US providers still maintain older obsolete analog and TDMA equipment, alongside their GSM installations... some have moved on to other platforms like UMTS ( the successor to GSM) , and some haven't made the move as yet.. competetion or no, is if it in their business plan or migration path...

Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean "a couple years old but still working". I'm talking about a box that has been hanging on a wall for well over 40 years at the very least, probably significantly more given the time the building was put up. The box was so old the fellas who came to replace it said they had never seen one that old. It was a barely functioning antique and the source of many headaches for the people in the building. (We did not know but not that it has been replaced only one line has had any problems at all and that was transient.)

There's a valid reason to support the older tech. People like me are cheap bastards. If I paid for a TDMA fone and it still works, I don't want a new fone. Because there are a range of companies all competing for my money, they cannot do as TSTT has and arbitrarily decide to stop supporting the TDMA fones and "force" people to quit.

gsm on the whole doesn't suck... is just tstt implementation doesn't have the capacity to handle the customer traffic..     they made a huge mistake by pushing people off the TDMA platform so quickly, and onto GSM without having enough cell sites to improve coverage, also, as one of their spokespersons said, they weren't  able to utilise another spectrum ( 800Mghz) to handle indoor usage, which is why people cah get indoor service..  they shoulda sort that out long ago..

i dunno if you remember that the TDMA network , at one point, sucked ballz as well.. esp on 'free call sunday' when sometimes you couldn;t get through even if your life depended on it?  when people migrated to gsm, tdma was clear as a bell, and few dropped calls if any..

The service sucked ballz because it was overloaded. Why it was overloaded, because TSTT didnt install enough equipment. As you say when people came off of the system it got a lot better. GSM network sucks, because the system is still partially overloaded. That's why when they were "upgrading" some time ago the whole system crashed as they came online. Too many fones trying to log in all at once.

the cellular roaming, applies to a good few places
here's a listing by country and network that tstt has agreements with
http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/roa_ttts.shtml
can't say first hand if it works as promised, cuz i doh travel with muh phone

gsm runs the route in europe and the states, while cdma is big in asia.. but changing, since cdma is a much newer tech

here are some figures, though they 2 years old
http://www.gsmworld.com/news/statistics/substats.shtml

Heh heh. Yeah that's the list of countries where it works all right. But it's like saying T&T has beaches. Yeah we do, but dont go Plum Mitan wearing swim trunks looking for a beach. For the most part coverage is restricted  in that list of countries to specific areas.

With regards to roaming charges even within yankeeland, check out bluegrass cellular (kentucky) and other cell companies and check out the coverage offered by the other companies in kentucky. Up until not so long ago they were bracing users very heavily. Because of the interconnection charges.

with regards to tstt business tactics.. is just that. business... is not like digicel come to hold they hands and go for a walk.. digicel come to buss them up too..lol
like what they did in almost every other territory to c & w..  they all out to make money.. and wherever digicel can cut them, bet your bottom dollar they will..

   

Fair enough. Course it's like saying Interserv is competing with TSTT as an isp. Any time TSTT decides they pull the plug and all us Interserv customers sit around wondering if we can find the source for the old ReiMUD and at least use the downtime to get to level 50.

   

i admit i wish the prices were lower , sooner, though... and yes they dragged their heels on the interconnection, but as tstt ceo said, they not bound by law to cooperate

the gov't had to intervene.. but i think that was all grandcharge.... the government is the largest shareholderin tstt, and the chairmain is a politcal appointee... i think they were stallin to give laqtel a lifeline ( laqtel being a enterprise owned by prominent gov't cronies)
if digicel launched last november, and got firmly entrenched, i doh think laqtel would have much of a chance to go beyond a small niche
but thas just my conspiracy theory...

     

The shareholder bit isnt as important as you figure, the same was basically true for BWEE and TTT. BWIA is integral to T&T so we cannot exactly close it down, and we cannot put fines on them because they done have money problems. TSTT on the other hand was losing tens of millions of dollars and not even noticing (or reporting it to the media, yeah we heard about the folks who got caught, but not the 40 million that went missing shortly before).

i agree with you also, on not buyin more than you need, but one spare phone is always an asset; my cell got soaked in the 'tsunami' last year, salvaged the sim, but the phone was toast..( literally.. battery shorted out.. smelt like burnt cookies)..
doh mind i doh live off muh phone, the spare phone came in handy...

but waste not, want not..

I had a similar experience, luckily it was fresh water, so I dried it out and it was fine. Since then I take precautions around large bodies of water.

i not familiar with the ruckus with the kiddies  you talkin bout tho, so yuh go hadda enlighten me on that

Seems someone though it was a good idea to have a parade up and down the roads in town while the SEA was going on. Was reported in yesterday's papers.

[disciple]

true , the interest rates and associated fees attached to such borrowings can be high, but as we saw in the case of TSTT's  1 Billion dollar bond issue last year, the costs are absorbed by the company ( in the long run, after competition settle, who know what gonna happen tho)



the subject of keeping on older tech is a touchy one...  yes, the phone still works, but how feasible will it be for a company to maintain older equipment for a handful of customers?    time to bite the bullet and move on.. ( although if the company wants to migrate the last few stragglers, they should 1) give them the phone for free and 2) make sure the network is reliable..
i think they did that when they migrated to tdma from analog..         



with regards to the unit in your building.. lol. well. pssht.. thas real odd .. hopefully is not the norm



to me , i remember hearing something about interserv  organisin  they own satellite uplink, or sumthin so ?  wasnt aware they still on tstt backbone...

on the roaming, again, as i said, i don't have first hand experience with it..  but those specific areas, any  idea where they are? ( just curious)


on the shareholder pt with tstt, i didn't say that they micromanage on a day to day basis, but what i was saying was that had they wanted to get something done.. a memo  to the chairman would carry some weight...   

[TrinireturnofGamez]

  IMO tstt is still sh!t.. no matter how low rates go , i don't get service by my house , i have to go outside into the road and pray for signal.. but just up the road is a cell tower painted red and white.... and with a tstt logo..
   Its not just my phone , my sister's phone gets even worse reception .

[Saxito Pau]

I can say that i am not very impressed with Digicel so far... I would have at least liked to see a greater variety of phones....

Right now I still cussin TSTT because this [fill in blank] Nokia 1100 I was forced to buy (lost my Nokia 5100 and was broke at the time) for $620 back in August is now a measly $99 .

To quote a friend of mine, "They ent care!"

Like most people who ent go Digicel yet I go adopt the wait and see attitude.

If TSTT services finally start to treat people like people,(and i mean ALL TSTT services, not just bmobile!) I go stay. if they still playin up in dey [fill in blank], I'll go Digicel. Customer service is important to me, and if i have to pay a lil extra to get it, I will pay for it.

[AIDS]

The phone wars are on and digicell is going neck and neck with TSTT.

Check this out from todays Newsday.

[Nephilim]

yes...consumer choice

[Spazosaurus]

This thing getting real rediculous. I walk out the road early this morning and it already had people lining up in front a Digicel outlet on the corner of Maraval and Tragerete road in Newtown. I counted at least 30 people outside waiting outside and the bloddy store aien even open yet. Everywhere u go people talking bout what pone they buy and how much air time they get and who chepaer than who lawwwwddd. Trini gone phone crazy with their $50 cellies.

[38_CalibuR]

THEY NEED to offer better phones  or a wider variety

[Nephilim]

dred 30? i live in couva, i NEED a new phone my cell screen mash up, i went out there at 7, thinking the same thing these other people thinking reach early beat rush, i see a line stretch from the door to the road and on the sidewalk.
i decided i don't need a phone that bad
and the other outlet further up the road was worst, it actually kinda funny though, i ended up walking past the line asking people to sell me their old phones