In recent months, the mobile phone industry has been a rare hassle in recent years. Needless to say, the cause of the rush was the pressure from the government to reduce mobile phone charges, and together with the announcements made by each company, it became a big topic in various fields. Many articles have been published in this magazine, and this column has covered not only the explanations in the announcements of each company but also the measures taken by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Can the "Action Plan" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications create a fair competitive environment?
How can we reduce mobile phone charges?
Under the pressure to reduce mobile phone charges, au may have misunderstood the timing.
KDDI, which provides au services, is based on DDI, which was established in June 1984 to compete with NTT Public Corporation (currently NTT Group), which had a complete monopoly on the domestic telecommunications business. As DNA, it has "competing against NTT".
In the initial discount service for long-distance calls (over 340km), the call charge of NTT Public Corporation was 400 yen for 3 minutes, while the new Denden companies such as DDI realized 300 yen for 3 minutes, which is a competitive charge. It was realized for the first time at a low price. In the era of mobile phones, au provided the first packet communication flat-rate plan "EZ Flat" in November 2003, paving the way for unlimited use. By the way, NTT DoCoMo could not immediately compete with EZ Flat, and in June 2004, about half a year later, we offered "Pake-hodai" only to subscribers of rate plans with a monthly basic charge of 6700 yen or more, and all plans. The response had to wait until January 2006, two years later.
KDDI should have such DNA, but in the announcement in December last year, it received a very strict evaluation mainly on the Internet.
In recent years, au has been the first to realize unlimited data communication with 4G LTE services, while also focusing on bundle plans with services provided by Netflix, Google, and Apple. Among the three major 5G services that started in March last year, the only official service is the all-you-can-use rate plan "Data MAX 5G", which is combined with the Netflix service in the lineup. I was adding.
The price plan announced in December last year follows this trend, and it is a plan that realizes a bundle with Amazon Prime, which was previously provided free of charge by NTT DoCoMo for one year, and bundles the two with the existing Netflix. Was also announced.
As for the contents of the price plan, considering the recent demand for nesting, it is said that there is definitely a need, and as a result, the application is going well, but the timing and expression of the announcement was bad. This is because au announced this plan on December 9, last year, a week after NTT DoCoMo announced "ahamo," and users who were expecting a counter-plan had a watermark.
In addition to this, the notation of monthly charges such as "Data MAX 5G with Amazon Prime" is "3980" after applying various discounts such as Family Discount Plus, au Smart Value combined with optical line and CATV line, 5G start discount etc. Because of the large notation of "yen / month ~", it was decided to buy an antipathy that would burn on the net.
In the background that it is generally said that "mobile phone charges are difficult to understand", I did not clearly specify the original pre-discount price, and only appealed the result of applying multiple discount services to the maximum, so I actually myself It was difficult to understand how much the monthly fee would be paid. I would like to reiterate this point, but as I explained in "How can I reduce mobile phone charges?" In this series in October last year, first, "How can I reduce mobile phone charges?" "Clarify the" raw rate plan "" is an essential condition.
However, the announcement of au's price plan in December last year could not feel the atmosphere that was being cultivated in such a market at all, and it was announced in the conventional way of expression, so it was decided to buy a backlash from users. is.
Following the flow in chronological order, NTT DoCoMo will have premier plans other than "ahamo" "5G Gigaho Premier" and "Gigaho Premier" on December 18, and SoftBank will be online-only "SoftBank" on December 22. We announced price plans for each of the three brands, including "on LINE," and as a result, at the end of 2020, only KDDI was left behind in a series of price cut competitions.
