SBC Offers Flat-Rate Plan

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

A few months back, I switched off SBC's local phone service in California to try out MCI's "The Neighborhood" flat-rate plan, which has had some problems, but overall has worked well. SBC has then spent plenty of time and effort tryng to convince me to come back into the baby bell fold. They've offered up a series of plans with larger and larger initial incentives. However, all of those plans still involved metering - which is something that is hard to overcome once you get used to a flat-rate plan. Now, it appears, they've finally realized that customers like flat rate offerings. It lets them do what they want, while knowing what their costs will be. There's no variable component. Thus, SBC is coming out with their own flat rate service, strategically priced a dollar under MCI's offer. What amazes me is that it's taken them (and all the other phone companies) this long to realize how much consumers value the flat-rate offerings.
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  • identicon
    Michaela Stephens, 5 Apr 2003 @ 7:15pm

    phone rates and phone bills should be trackable

    My personal opinion is that every metered-access phone and every cell phone plan with free minutes should have a way to display how many minutes they have talked, how many long distance minutes they have talked, how many free minutes left, and any other important time related information so that people can keep track of their phone usage, and even budget their phone usage. What's more, I think phones should be able to calculate and display one's monthly phone bill based on the usage accumulated for the month at that moment. None of these nasty surprises at the end of the month.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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