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Wednesday, August 13, 2025

No 4G price war between bmobile and Digicel

by

20121116

It's by no means a price war be­tween the two telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers bmo­bile and Dig­i­cel for their 4G da­ta plans. This was the view of the mo­bile op­er­a­tors yes­ter­day as both com­pa­nies took out full-page ad­ver­tise­ments pub­li­cis­ing their new pro­mo­tions.

In the dai­ly news­pa­pers yes­ter­day, Dig­i­cel ad­ver­tised 5GB for $129 for its new 4G mo­bile broad­band plan. The ad­ver­tise­ment in­clud­ed a spe­cial pro­mo­tion for 1GB for $86, 5 GB is for $129 and a new HUAWEI Me­di­a­pad 7 Lite Tablet-post­paid with da­ta for $999. Bmo­bile's pro­mo­tion for its post-paid 4G cus­tomers is a 5GB a month plan for on­ly $179. No hid­den fees and no se­cu­ri­ty de­posit.

The term GB means gi­ga­bytes, which is usu­al­ly used in the world of com­put­ing to de­scribe disk space, da­ta stor­age space and sys­tem mem­o­ry, ac­cord­ing to whatsabyte.com. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day Pen­ny Gomez, Dig­i­cel's com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er said, "What you see and read is what you get. There is no hid­den in­for­ma­tion."

She dis­count­ed the fact that Dig­i­cel was en­gag­ing in a price war with Bmo­bile, which launched its of­fi­cial 4G net­work last week Mon­day. Dig­i­cel launched its 4G net­work in May promis­ing their cus­tomers a unique, re­li­able, su­per-fast In­ter­net speed.

Asked if Dig­i­cel has low­ered its prices in re­sponse to the Bmo­bile 4G launch, Gomez said, "No. We have been about our busi­ness and we had these plans in train. Gomez stat­ed that the Irish-owned com­pa­ny had been plan­ning and strate­gis­ing to put new pro­mo­tions in place for the Christ­mas.

She ex­plained Dig­i­cel has its an­a­lysts who con­sis­tent­ly re­view the mar­ket and see what is cur­rent and rel­e­vant in or­der to make their cus­tomers hap­py, as there is al­ways an op­por­tu­ni­ty to add val­ue. Gomez said that the spe­cial of­fer for the 5GB was in keep­ing with the Christ­mas cam­paign-"Lets share a smile this Christ­mas."

"We nor­mal­ly have pro­mo­tions at Christ­mas, so these of­fers were in the mak­ing for awhile. We of­ten look at the range of ser­vices to find sev­er­al ways of adding val­ue for our cus­tomers, tai­lored to suit their needs." She said the pro­mo­tions would run in­def­i­nite­ly, un­til Dig­i­cel im­ple­ments an­oth­er one.

Mean­while in an emailed re­sponse, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Bmo­bile Ronald Wal­cott said: "Bmo­bile has made a com­mit­ment to of­fer mo­bile da­ta users in T&T the best val­ue for mon­ey and as such our sole fo­cus is on de­liv­er­ing that val­ue to cus­tomers." Wal­cott ex­plained the prices shown for Bmo­bile and Dig­i­cel in the ads are for two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ser­vices.

He said, "The fine print of Dig­i­cel's ad ex­pos­es that these rates are for 'da­ta on­ly' de­vices. On­ly peo­ple ac­cess­ing the com­peti­tor's ser­vice with don­gles, Mi­fi de­vices (spe­cial modems) or Tablet com­put­ers will get these rates. The rates will not ap­ply to any­one us­ing a 4G phone.

He said: "In fact, ac­cord­ing to the ad, up­on ac­ti­va­tion of this ser­vice, Dig­i­cel will de­ac­ti­vate voice and sms ser­vice from the user's SIM card. Al­so there are less vis­i­ble ad­di­tion­al fees and charges to be paid in or­der to get this ser­vice from them."

In com­par­i­son, Wal­cott said, Bmo­bile's ad, which has no fine print, no hid­den fees and no se­cu­ri­ty de­posit and is for cus­tomers us­ing 4G phones.

He stat­ed clear­ly that Bmo­bile has not ad­ver­tised com­pa­ra­ble plans for "Da­ta on­ly" de­vices. "How­ev­er, we do plan to and those prices will be guid­ed by our phi­los­o­phy to give cus­tomers val­ue for mon­ey and not make pric­ing cause cit­i­zens to be ex­clud­ed from us­ing mo­bile 4G ser­vices,"


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