Three, a popular UK mobile network, has defended its plans to move customers from a legacy tariff on to a newer, higher price tariff. Customers who signed-up to a tariff for £17/month with 'all-you-can-eat' data will have their plans automatically changed from the £17/month to the £30/month plan, in order to keep their unlimited data.
Customers will receive a letter and a text message that outlines the changes, and will have 30-days to opt-out (and cancel their plan, or change to one of their choosing) otherwise they will be charged the new monthly amount.
The original tariff of £17 stopped being offered to new customers in 2014 when Three redesigned all of their offerings. This new, albeit forceful, measure of changing customers' tariffs appears to be one of many choices that companies in the mobile industry have made as of late; to reduce the availability of unlimited data.
Ben Wood, from CCS Insight gave his thoughts on the changes and the way that the industry is adjusting to ever-increasing data usage:
The networks are seeing huge growth in data consumption as people watch more video content at ever-higher resolutions on their smartphones. At some point certain all-you-can-eat tariffs become uneconomical.
According to Three, its average customer only uses 4.9GB of data per month, although it will continue to offer all-you-can-eat data on its higher plans.
Customers vented their anger at the changes on Twitter, using Three's current marketing hashtag #MakeItRight. The marketing campaign shows how Three is making changes in the mobile industry to make things right for the consumer, however in this case, it appears that customers don't agree.
Even though Three is bumping up affected customers to the £30/month plan, they can still receive all-you-can-eat-data for a slightly cheaper price, at £20/month, although you will lose the unlimited calls as a result.
Source: BBC News
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