New to Slovenia – and a growing trend in many other territories – is an offer that allows mobile subscribers to share their unused gigabytes with other users.
For the moment, Telekom Slovenije is the only operator in Slovenia that allows its subscribers of most mobile plans to gift the unused gigabytes from their data allowance and share them with others.
This offer doesn’t, of course, apply to transfers involving users of other networks. The recipient of the spare gigabytes has to be a Telekom Slovenije mobile subscriber (or Telekom Slovenije mobile prepaid user). In addition, the extra gigabytes have to be used by the end of the month in which they are received.
Operator offers helping end users to make the most of unused data are becoming more common nowadays as consumers become more aware of how much they are spending (and losing) on unused data. Data rollovers and the opportunity to share unused data with family members, for example, are gaining traction in a number of countries.
Of course data packages differ from market to market and from operator to operator. Telekom Slovenije mobile packages come with data allowances of 2 GB, 70 GB or 140 GB monthly. Subscribers can gift their unused gigabytes by using My Telekom – the customer site service – or simply sending a text message.
A subscriber is free to gift the gigabytes included in his or her data allowance (but not any additional data plans), and the service is available free of charge. Mobile subscribers of Telekom Slovenije can transfer gigabytes to others, while prepaid users can only receive them.
Customers will no doubt welcome such offers but their growth does beg a number of questions. Is this sort of activity driven by competition, the continuing spread of Wi-Fi, or both? How it will develop when the rollout of 4G and 5G base stations makes more, even faster data available? And, more broadly, what’s next for customer data packages?
