NonPrayingMantis maybe you should come up with price comparisons of your own and present them because it's not exactly easy to incorporate your Best Mates wishes into price comparisons.
We all know it's cheaper to be with the same network as your best mate due to the subsidised nature of these call plans, but in the OP usage patterns you can really only calculate usage patterns based on "any network any time any number" minutes rather than to try and differentiate.
If you want to say that 75% of 300 minute usage is to a best mate, then simply recalculate it as 75 minutes "any network any time any number" and then add $6 for Best Mates.
The OP asked for suggestions of other scenarios to consider, so that is what I gave him. :D I already said (in another thread) I was too lazy to make some price comparisons myself.
I will try to work out a way to include a best mate comparison, though it is difficult to judge how much people would use on these plans. The only month I ever had bestmate, I probably clocked up 3000 minutes, mainly because I used it inplace of a landline to call that person most of the time. If people have any idea what would work minutes wise, I will put it on.
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If you have a best mate, you will call more than if it is not available. That's natural. The question is how to work out the "break even point" and that will depend on the individual. Silly complicated plans.
Best mate increases minutes to that person for sure, but even without it I suspect the assumption that most people make most of their 'natural' calls to 1 or 2 numbers is pretty sound. (if you are on account and don't have it, check out your itemised bill next time).
The break even point is easy to work out for the minutes to that person.
What is the cost of a 'best mate plan? $6\ If you don't have a best mate plan, what is the cost per minute on 2D? 22c (assuming magic topup and onnet calling) Number of minutes to break even = 27 (27 x 22c = $5.94)
IOW, if your natural usage is less than 27 mins/month to your best mate, then you're better off with 2D for those minutes. If it is more than 27 mins then you are better with XT/Voda.
I suspect that the main reason 2d don't have a best mate option is that a lot of their customer base is connecting through vodafone, so calls within their own customers are not necessarily "free". Hopefully once they have a national network, they will offer such plans. If they wanted to be really clever, they could make it so you have a $6 cap on three on-net numbers, that changes so you save the most money, while 2d's profit would be down, having it set dynamically would mean people are more likely to spend calling more than just 3 contacts, as they know they are always getting the most out of their money.
The more I think about adding a bestmate comparison, the more I realize it is not needed, because you can just work out how much you call someone and whether the amount you call them will cost more than saving of being with 2d.
I am going to add a light mixed option, for people like myself that spend next to nothing (I put on $20 every 2 months), as while the answer is obvious, it will make the savings clearer so it can be balanced out with whether you would rather spend that bit extra to have add-ons, or just be able to spend half the amount on your phone.
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ahmad: I for one welcome the lack of TXT plans (for now).
At first I was worried about 2 Degrees uptake given the strong opposition to those writing on the 2D facebook wall at lack of TXT plans.
Then as I read more of the comments here, I realised that these make no money for the networks involved.
IMO the sooner these disappear the better. As it currently stands, "Callers" are paying 89c/min to subsidise the lifestyles of piggy-backing TXTers. I could be wrong in my way of thinking though, and happy to be corrected.
I'd like 2 Degrees to have some sort of TXT plan perhaps, but only at 100/150/250 sort of levels, certainly not in the order of 1000-2000. Not fussed right now though. Data is far more important to me.
I would have to disagree. A single text on Vodafone's network is at max 160 characters, plus some overhead and error correction and you are probably looking at ~200 bytes data usage. Compare this to a call, which, even with compressed audio data is several THOUSAND bytes per second. The fact we txters pay $1 for 1 kilobyte of txt data (or $1 for 40kB on for eg, Txt2000) is ridiculous when callers eat up hundreds of kB per minute for a cheaper price.
Calling is far more data intensive and thus costly than txting. Therefore I would say network operators make A LOT of money off txters.
Also, speaking of 3G data usage, even vodafones exorbitant $1/MB on some plans, if you could route your calls and txts over that and have them billed as data rather than minutes/txts, you would probably save alot of money!
I've nested a lot of IFs into the functions, so I can only put out an Office 2007 version. Anyone with a better way to choose a value with a statement inside? That'll be great.
great data you have yea people need to shop around , a reply i posted a short time aga 500txt for 10 eqates to 2 cents a txt, even at my 132 txt last month it turned out 7 cents each. anyone know if 022 is going to/has a flat price txt plan ,only quickly looked at their site, cheers
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