Data runs out fast
Ignacio Martínez, a Telcel user, said that he pays 200 pesos for his telephone line, with the expectation that it will last a month. “But even if I don’t watch videos or download things from Gmail, the 200 pesos only last me 20 days, or even less. I felt that less than a year ago the megabytes did last me a month,” explains the user.
The phenomenon is much more marked and detected by consumers in the prepaid segment, which serves eight out of 10 consumers in Mexico.
Among all the users, those who are with AT&T are the ones that report the longest duration of the megabytes, while those of Telcel and Telefónica assure that the megabytes last less than in 2022.
Dolores Santiago, a Telcel user, tops up 20 pesos every fortnight, sometimes a month. “But nothing lasts anymore. Before, that gave me credit for up to two days, then it dropped to one day and now my data runs out in a matter of hours,” she says.
Israel Muñoz is another Telefónica prepaid consumer, who claims to recharge 50 pesos monthly for months. Before it lasted up to seven days and now only five days, despite the fact that he assures that he has maintained his rate of data consumption and downloads.
“Last year I began to detect that my recharges lasted less, at first I thought it was due to my data consumption, but even when I stop watching video on the networks and only send messages, I feel that now (the recharge) lasts less,” he explains.
Fernando Esquivel, director of market research at The Ciu consultancy, explained that the competition generated by Virtual Mobile Operators (OMVs), such as Walmart’s Bait, in the telephony market has caused traditional operators to increase data capacity in recharges, but to balance the “more megabytes for little money” model, it has been detected that operators reduce the days of validity.
“It is a trend that the megabytes of recharges last less, despite the fact that (the operators) give you more data for social networks,” says the specialist.
What about rental plans?
Most of the users who have postpaid plans agreed that their megabytes last as stipulated in their contract, although a few others explained that, despite not using as much data because most of the time they are connected to their home or office WiFi, they have detected that their monthly megabytes do not last for 30 days.
Ana Fernández assured that her Telcel plan lasts less than 20 days, despite the fact that she hardly downloads data, since when doing home office no need to download data.
“I have the basic plan and my data always lasted for the whole month, even when I used it to listen to Spotify while running for up to 50 minutes three times a week. But since January they don’t last as long, even though I don’t use platforms anymore. Now I get the little message to notify me that I had already exceeded my consumption of gigabytes and that if I want to continue enjoying data downloads I must pay a surplus”, explains the user.
Héctor Paredes, another Telcel user, and Iván Guadarrama, an AT&T subscriber, face a similar situation. “Although (the operators) have not increased the rates, I feel that now (the megabytes) last me less and I start having data download problems a week before or a little more than the end of the month, and I have not changed my data consumption habits”, he says.
AT&T and Telcel assured Expansion that the recharge and package data lasts as long as the validity stipulates and what could be happening is that users are consuming more video content or applications such as Facebook or YouTube, when they give click to external links, among other actions, which consume a large amount of data.
The specialist from The Ciu consultancy details that one factor that could explain why postpaid users experience the early end of their megabytes is that they leave applications in the background, which ends up absorbing megabytes without them noticing.