Business With an Innovative Music Payment Plan

Mobile operator Telia Norway said that customers with a business subscription can now use its Music Freedom service without burdening their employer with the cost, by paying the NOK 49.00 (US $5.10) monthly charge themselves using the Norwegian mobile payment app Vipps. The aim is to stop corporate subscriptions from being restrictive.

Music Freedom separates data used for streaming or downloading tracks from the allowance provided in the subscription. It works with Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, Beat and Audiomack, via mobile application or browser. Music Freedom includes use in the EU/EEA and Switzerland.

Vegar Heir, commercial director at Vipps, said Telia is an early adaptor of new payment methods and is one of the first mobile operators to offer its customers the option of recurring payments.

The increasing blurring of the boundaries between personal and business use of mobile devices poses some challenges for both mobile operators and mobile users. BYOD usage patterns encourage employees of companies who are on business plans to use their devices for ubiquitous personal purposes such as music streaming. Of course, this can create problems for the employers when it comes to dealing with the charges, getting reimbursement from employees and maintaining corporate morale.

Telia Norway is offering an app-driven solution to this problem by allowing a kind of split billing in which the employee pays the monthly charge directly, as an individual, for music streaming from Spotify, Apple Music or whichever service, despite the fact that the rest of the data consumed is paid for the company. This way, there is no conflict, and both employer and employees are financially whole. The partnership with Vipps, the mobile payment platform, enables the functionality of the payments possible in what appears to be a seamless manner.

Music Freedom, true to its name, should provide enough freedom to keep corporate subscribers happy, which in turn should increase loyalty and subscriber acquisition in future.

Tarifica is a global SaaS company and a market leader in the real-time collection, analysis and delivery of telecom plan and pricing data worldwide. Through a mix of AI, modeling and market expertise, Tarifica tracks hundreds of thousands of plan and pricing data points daily. No other company tracks more. Tarifica's mission is to continuously convert data into the dynamic intelligence that fuels opportunities for its clients, the world's leading operators, regulators and consultants. 

Learn more about Tarifica at www.tarifica.com.

Etisalat Launches Postpaid Plans

UAE operator Etisalat has announced the launch of new postpaid plans under the moniker of Freedom. Customers can choose a no-contract plan or a one-year contract plan. Data and voice allowances will be the same on both plans, but the one-year contract offers savings up to 20 percent on their rental charges and six months of free access to Apple Music.

Customers can choose from six tiers starting from AED 100 (US $27.22) for the Freedom Plan 100, which offers 2 GB of data and 100 flexible minutes or 200 local minutes. The Freedom Plan 275 includes 20 GB and 750 flexible minutes or 1,500 local minutes, while the Freedom Plan 1000 offers 100 GB of data and 2,000 flexible minutes or 4,000 local minutes. All the Freedom plans come with 100 free Wi-Fi hours each month, which customers can use at more than 350 locations in the UAE.

One of the signal trends in the worldwide mobile markets that we have observed is the strong increase in desire for plan-feature flexibility among many levels of consumers. Budget operators and large operators’ budget tariffs have been leading this trend, with no-contract plans and prepaid offers dominating.

Here we see a major operator catering to this need, clearly announcing its approach in the very name of the plans—Freedom. The fact that these are postpaid plans indicates that this emphasis on flexibility and freedom is now very relevant in the postpaid sector, not just the prepaid. This flexibility is expressed in the relatively intricately tiered plan structure, which provides different levels of data and voice calibrated to usage levels. It is also apparent from the fact that voice allowances are convertible between local minutes and flexible minutes, again catering to users’ various needs.

Finally, although Freedom is a postpaid option, the plans can be subscribed to in contracted and no-contract forms, without any disadvantage in terms of basic plan features. This is a significant fact in light of the traditional conception of a postpaid plan. Etisalat is depending on the Apple Music service and a price reduction to attract user to the one-year (note, not two-year) contract versions, but it is clearly aware that freedom from contractual obligations will be a major element of the concept of “freedom” for many customers. 

Tarifica is the global leader in monitoring and analyzing telecom pricing. Covering hundreds of operators in every region of the globe, Tarifica’s databases of mobile and fixed line data and voice tariffs are among the largest and most in-depth in the world. Tarifica is also a leading publisher of benchmark and other pricing reports, and its analysts are recognized authorities in the telecom industry, relied upon by operators and businesses worldwide for pricing insight and guidance.  

To learn more about Tarifica, please visit www.tarifica.com