The Missing Data Phenomenon

Mobile operators face whimsical tariff, Consumers pay a price massive.

Loss of unused data has become a major concern among mobile data pack users. BTRC held several hearings in the past about the issue.Mostly private operators get the blame. Now public operator like Teletalk joined the party. Currently, Teletalk offered the cheapest data pack in the country.

Other operators, which continue to sustain punitive tariff payment, just pass their burden on consumers,making their products much expensive.

Even the 72-hour duration data pack became costly compared to other competitors. But the problem is it is not easy to measure the data you consume.

Back in 2018 when BTRC raised the duration of small internet package ,I wrote a piece titled “Asymmetric Information And Data Pack” highlighting this missing data phenomenon:

"""

Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission has recently instructed all the mobile operators to raise the duration of small internet packages. From now onwards, all the packages have minimum duration of 7 days and maximum duration of 30 days.

According to a news report, mostly students, youths, occasional internet users and lower income groups are main clients of this small packs.

As small packs are still available in the market, consumers are still somehow unaffected by the decision. But the operators may drive them to relatively costly packages using BTRC decision as a pretext. The restriction is only on the duration.

Being a user of this small packs, I am also likely to suffer from BTRC decision.

Nowadays data packs become a major source of revenues for mobile operators.

One can see the asymmetric information playing a role in the interaction between data pack purchaser and operators. Here consumers (principal) have no clue on the type of operators(agent)they are dealing with.Operator may pretend to be honest and act as a dishonest one.

Despite the fact that there are many operators in the cellular data market, they behave and offer products in unison. And two big operators have merged. So, this cellular data market cannot be categorized as a textbook competitive market.

When you buy goods from a grocer you have the means to recheck the quantity you bought. Unfortunately, most of the data pack users do not have means to verify the usage of purchased data.

One may argue that there are apps that keep records of data usage. But I lost faith on them after I had found one giving suspicious reading.

So an internet user may pay for a 50 MB pack but ended up getting less of what he paid for. It is pretty easy to monitor the talk time, but very hard to measure the kilobyte or megabyte you used.

So, it is highly likely that operators cheat their customers. This is an example of hidden information problem, where some operators pretend to be selling the right data pack but deliver less output.

I would like to share my own experience in this regard.Two years ago I used to buy data pack of 1 GB at Tk 89 for a week. Soon I discovered that I ran out of my data before the expiration date. I used the mobile internet and pretty convinced that smartphone consumes less data than a laptop. Earlier I had used internet on my laptop spending less than Tk 100 for the same data pack for a month.

I had a belief that using internet on smartphone would cost me less. To my surprise, my internet cost quadrupled. Far too often my internet packs finished before the expiry date.

I visited mostly news sites and social media. And from my past experience I knew these visits consumed modest amount of MBs.

I went to a local mobile balance recharge shop and shared my concern. The pack seller advised me to buy pack for lesser volume with smaller duration. I migrated to such pack.

I discovered that smaller packs worth Tk 5, Tk 11 and Tk20 provided me the desired utility within the given duration. And I slashed significantly my monthly cost on internet.

Later I figured out how it happened. Cheating operator made a profile on your internet usage. For long duration you may not be serious about internet use. Based on that profile, it cheats on you about your data usage. It pretends to be an honest operator and delivers less than what you paid for.

By changing my internet use , I made the cheating process less attractive to the operator. My weekly spending was around Tk 90. By changing the internet use, I reduced it to Tk 30 per week, one third of Tk 90. Moreover, i switched to limited-duration packs, which are less prone to cheating. I altered completely my weekly internet use.Now the operator found my pack less attractive to cheat.

In data pack market all the operators follow somewhat similar product line, all of them offering small data packs, varying slightly in duration and volume.But fierce competition is absent here. You have an aura that there is only one operator.

What BTRC has done is to drive us to situation where consumers are less better off given that asymmetric information prevails in the market. Now the operators , as all of them have to obey the regulator’s decision, may offer data packs that are relatively expensive compared to earlier ones. Every one of them knows other will do the same.

With relatively higher price and duration, consumers also face the higher risk of being cheated. They may end up getting less than what they paid for.¹

"""

This is exactly what is happening now. The 72-hour long data ends pretty early. For my case it lasts only 24-hour. It increased my monthly costs 5 times more than what I paid in 2018. So I decided to switch to longer-duration packs with larger data volumes, hoping such move will again slash my monthly costs. Teletalk allows to carry the unused data to the newly purchased pack. I found proofs in smaller packs like 350 MB/750MB/1 GB. It convinced me such things will likely to happen in longer duration pack. Just a day before the expiration of one such pack, I purchased another pack. Previous pack’s unused 7GB data added to the current pack and total data reflected it. But after the expiration, I surprisingly noticed that my unused 7GB data was gone. I did not expect this from a public operator that is meant to protect consumer interest. I suffer a monetary loss in the times of high inflation. I instantly reported the phenomenon to BTRC.

Many of the consumers do not take account of such missing data and net welfare loss is huge in this case. The resources may end up covering expenses of some vested quarters, who are not good for the people. I do not blame the operators too much as they have to do business in an environment that is becoming difficult to operate. If government continues to slap tariff, we the consumers bear larger part of the burden. No wonder more people switch back to dumb phones nowadays.

Notes And References

1. ”Asymmetric Information And Data Pack”,Rezaul Hoque,December 16,2018,https://rezaulhoque.wordpress.com. For more read at https://rezaulhoque.wordpress.com/2018/12/16/asymmetric-information-and-data-pack/