Are there really no overpayments? We are studying new tariffs “MegaFon”
Mobile operators often release new tariffs on the market. You look at advertising – so directly one is more profitable than the other, one continuous communism: you need to pay almost nothing, and you will need as many services as you like for it. However, a careful study usually reveals many nuances and “pitfalls” that no one will tell about. Except for us, of course. Today we decided to carefully study the latest novelty of the mobile market – MegaFon’s package line with the long name “Always in touch with tariffs # No Overpayments”.
From the point of view of the combination of minutes, megabytes, and other services, the tariff plans are predictable “mid-market”, they are matched to the typical profiles of using communication services. That is, there is no primitive principle: “Whoever needs more Internet, probably needs more minutes.” It hardly makes sense to list the parameters of all seven offers of the line in each region; Russia is one of the few countries where operators’ prices vary in different connection cities. This has happened historically since the nineties when there were dozens of local regional operators in the country, plus the geographical and economic specifics effect: therefore, for example, in Pskov, mobile communications are cheaper than in Moscow (there the level of income of the population is lower), and somewhere on The Far North is more expensive – simply because there, for example, satellite channels are used,
In terms of the volume of included traffic, the tariffs are expected to be the average market. However, we emphasize once again: the meaning of the “No Overpayments” line is not in the ratio of price and traffic volume, but in several additional “chips” that other operators do not have.
Firstly, the MegaFon Protection service is automatically activated for all tariffs. It includes free antivirus for Android smartphones with the Anti-Theft function, and, most importantly, protects against all kinds of “subscriptions” to content. With them in recent years in Russia, the real trouble is: they connect automatically and in 99% of cases unconsciously: a normal person is unlikely to want to pay 50 rubles a day for access to “funny videos”. There are also useful subscriptions, and for the sake of their convenience, this automatic activation was invented, however, alas, fraudulent schemes flourish and crawl from all cracks. So, with “Protection” when trying to connect a paid service or subscription, the subscriber receives an additional confirmation request. Fighting “toxic content” is a definite boon.
Secondly, there is a “Gigabyte piggy bank”. It solves the main problem of all package tariffs: the volume of Internet traffic is fixed every month, but the volume of consumption usually changes – roughly speaking, last month you sat at home on Wi-Fi for a whole month, and this time you went to the dacha and gave your child to watch cartoons on YouTube. It often turns out that in one month you have a lot of paid, but not used traffic, which burns out, and in the next – sorry, the Internet is over, you need to pay extra. Previously, this was solved only by connecting a more expensive tariff with a deliberately excessive traffic package. Everything is fair with the Piggy Bank: all unused traffic goes to the reserve, and when the Internet at the tariff suddenly ends, it starts to be spent from the Piggy Bank, in which up to 100 GB is saved indefinitely, and not just for the next month. Nobody else on the market has this. In addition, you can distribute the Internet from your smartphone to any number of devices without restrictions: no “3 GB per month” or “only 2 hours free”. Moreover, traffic from the main package is consumed first, and only then – from the “Moneybox”. However, if you choose the unlimited Internet, then it will be unlimited for distribution.
Thirdly, it is free-roaming at higher tariffs. For each month of using the tariff, the subscriber gets a bonus – 1 or 2 days of free communication abroad, and this is up to 2 GB of the Internet and 120 minutes of calls per day, depending on the country. For those who travel abroad – a great offer. The maximum that other operators give is 200 MB of roaming traffic per day at one of the tariffs, after which the speed is cut to 128 Kbps, that is, the Internet becomes suitable only for instant messengers.
By the way, about messengers. Messengers – quite familiar WhatsApp, Viber, FacebookMessenger or Snapchat, dear to someone – are unlimited and do not consume a packet of traffic. However, this today will not surprise anyone. But if they stop working for other operators when the account is reset, then they continue to work on the “No Overpayments” line.
Fourthly, on-net calls on most tariff plans no longer consume a package of minutes. For the last five years, most often this unlimited has been working for Russian operators, in fact, after you have used up the entire package, forcing you to buy additional voice traffic anyway. Now you can take a cheaper tariff with about a third fewer number of minutes: private clients still make calls to relatives, and within the same family, the main operator is most often one.
In addition, the tariff includes a subscription to 50 channels and some MegaFon TV films: you can watch them on your smartphone without consuming traffic, or you can use the Smart TV application: up to 5 devices can be connected to one account simultaneously. The older tariff plans also include subscriptions to Amediateku, More.tv, and other online cinemas. In other respects, the tariff plans repeat the principles of the previous MegaFon “Turn on” lines. Conveniently, when the limits are exceeded, there are now no automatic connections of voice and Internet packages: the speed is simply limited, and the subscriber himself chooses whether to pay extra for the extension or not. Among the shortcomings, it can be noted that, as before, the lower tariffs do not include calls to local fixed numbers – it is important to pay attention to this; on the other hand, SMS packages reappeared on many tariff plans:
