Are Bundled Offers By Online Retailers On Mobile Phones Worth The Penny?

Carrying forward the Unlimited Data frenzy, telecom operators are offering handset bundled unlimited data and voice plans by partnering with major e-commerce giants in the country. These offers depend on the handset purchased by the user. These offers are beneficial for the telecom operators as well as the online retailers. Vodafone has tied up with Amazon for OnePlus 5 and offers 45 GB data free and three months of free Vodafone Play.

On purchasing the Lenovo Vibe K5, a user can get 45GB free data for five months. The free data can be availed if the user buys 1GB of data or more. E-commerce giant Flipkart has tied with Idea Cellular for the Lenovo K6 Power. With Lenovo K6 Power an Idea user gets 30GB data for 28 days on recharge of Rs.356 and unlimited voice calling (Local + National) up to 300 min/ day or 1200 min/weekly. With Moto C Plus a Jio Prime user can avail Rs. 309 plan benefits along with 5GB extra data through Flipkart. The Moto C Plus offer is valid where the services of RJIO are activated for the first time, on or after June 20th, 2017. And for the Lenovo K6 Power, the Idea offer is valid up to 30 June 2017, and Amazon Vodafone offer is valid up to June 30, 2017.

The offers may not seem attractive enough for a buyer at first glance. But users can keep the extended Data benefit SIM as their secondary number. Since the operator for a particular handset is already decided by the online retailer, any participation in the bundled data/voice offer is voluntary. The telcos can revert to the earlier model of SIM bundled offers, where the price of the handset was subsidised. The user had to pay the monthly fixed charges and can claim the data and voice benefit along with the handset.

We hope to see a drop in the price of unlimited bundled offers to be likened by users. We expect online retailers to come up with bundled plans cheaper than those already available in the market.