The telecommunications industry appears to be comprised mainly of the kind of people who would be holding up stage coaches were they to find themselves born one hundred and fifty years earlier. There are a different set of evil companies, performing a different set of evil practices depending on whether you're in the US or Australia. I'm making assumptions and extrapolations at this point, but I assume it's a similar situation outside of these two nations.
Here's the marketing plan for my imaginary telco I'm setting up as soon as that cheque clears:
- You give us money, we provide services. This is the way things should work, and the way we work.
- We'll sell you a phone, unmodified save configuration for our network. If you don't want to pay up front, get a Visa.
- Sim cards are $foo each, come with $bar credit.
- All messages you send cost $foo, all phone calls cost $bar per minute, rounded down with a minimum of 1 minute. Regardless of how you pay.
- Data is (small)$foo per megabyte or part thereof, summed and charged once a day.
- Prepaid: You pay, you get credit. $2 of credit expires every 30 days you don't recharge.
- PostPaid: You use it, we bill you, you pay. Every month. Paper bills are $5 each, because it's a pain and bad for mother earth. There's a setup fee to cover the float, and it's bigger if you don't organise direct debit or leave credit card details. PostPaid has an optional cap: When you use more than you want to, we stop it. You can then use a prepay, or just wait a month. Use prepaid recharges any old time. Any credit you have at the time of billing comes off the bill we send.
- If your balance gets to $0, you can receive calls for 4 weeks, receive text for 8. After 12 we release your phone number and kill the SIM.
- Usage stats are available for customers online. Where'd your money go? It went here.
*Sigh*... A man can dream
