The case for Digi Postpaid

Remember the time when I argued the case for choosing TuneTalk Mobile Prepaid as the best telco there is out there? Well times has changed and with intense competition from various telcos in the country lately to win customers, there are a lot of better value for money plans to choose from out there. Unfortunately TuneTalk no longer offers the best value for money plan for its customers (i.e me). It's either they couldn't compete with the big 4 major telcos out there (they're still only an MNVO after all) or they got their marketing and priorities wrong. I suspect it's a combination of both. Here is a comparison between my existing Digi Postpaid 68 plan and my last TuneTalk subscription:

As you can see the Digi Postpaid plan is vastly more superior than TuneTalk's at only RM16 more per month. With the amount of Internet, voice, SMS and other extras included with Digi, it's a no-brainer. You get 6GB of data, that's twice as much than Tunetalk, free 150 minutes voice and 150 SMS and if you don't finish your 6GB quota, 2GB gets rolled over to the next month so you get 8GB instead that month. Meanwhile with TuneTalk's Datata plan you get only 3GB free but calls and sms are charged separately. To be fair for TuneTalk, if you reload RM50 you get 1.5GB free data, 50 minutes voice and RM10 extra to your credit. So here's a revised comparison between Digi and Tunetalk if you include the 50 ringgit topup:

Still with that extra data and free voice call for TuneTalk, it's nowhere near as good as Digi's offering if you count the extras. Digi Music Freedom is one of the main plus point for Digi Postpaid. Available for Postpaid 68 plans and above, I get to stream various music streaming services for free from my smartphone. Some of the apps supported include Spotify, Apple Music, SoundHound, Tidal, Deezer, Raku and all of Astro online radio stations such as Era Fm, Hitz, Mix fm and Sinar fm just to name a few. Imagine being able to stream my favourite music anywhere, in the car for example connected to my stereo's Bluetooth without having to worry about using up all my data allocation. It's just awesome. Digi's plans are just better in every aspect even without points collection like TuneTalk's BIG points reward.

I have held on as long as I can to TuneTalk out of loyalty, especially after they surprised me with an iPhone on their 5th anniversary. However with such good offerings from various telcos staring at my face, I'd be hard pressed to cling on to loyalty factor than value for money. Actually, Digi does not even offer the best plan in the market right now, only second best. The best one comes from U Mobile with 15GB data, free video streaming, unlimited calls to all network for only RM70 per month. The only reason I chose Digi over U Mobile is that their coverage is known to suck in the past and I'm still not convinced it has improved significantly. Maybe in the future, who knows.

So in a nutshell, competition is always good for consumers. When telcos strive to win over customers with attractive and competitive plans and benefits, the customers will win. For sentimental reasons, I hate to ditch TuneTalk for Digi hence why I still keep my TuneTalk number albeit downgraded to 365 days validity with minimum credit. It's time they buck up and catch up with the competition. I'm perplexed why they choose to focus their marketing budget on bringing in foreign artistes and sponsoring mixed martial art competitions who no one gives a shit about. Voice and Internet data plans are the two main things that subscribers cares about so if you top the offerings for those two the numbers will roll in. Is it any wonder Digi now has the most amount of subscribers in Malaysia overtaking Maxis? I don't know perhaps because TuneTalk is just an MNVO and they're restricted by their master (Celcom) so they can't offer better data and voice plans for their customers? Either way buck up or get left behind.