The labyrinth of telephone rates divides us all into beneficiaries and victims. There are those who pay up to three times more than others, who are perhaps customers of the same operator and have a similar tariff formula. There are those who consume little or very little and throw away minutes and traffic paid for handsomely, and those who remain Internet dry really too soon. The fault (or merit, depending on the point of view) of the perverse game between operators, who in exchange for "list" rates offer deadly discounts and theoretically unmissable offers to those willing to transfer their number from a competing operator. But the it's our fault too. Navigating the tariff magma is difficult, but it is worth applying yourself. To seize the real opportunities and avoid the traps, which are not lacking. The criteria for choosing well, perhaps to change for the better? Here they are.
Staying put? Watch out for new offers
Staying for years with the same tariff formula and the same operator can in some cases be a good idea, but it often turns out to be a mistake. The first criterion to adopt is that of monitor periodically our rate, comparing it with market offers. The operators - not only the big Vodafone, Tim and WindTre and the rampant Iliad that own and directly manage the cellular networks but also the vast array of virtual operators that rely on other people's networks - observe each other, settle strategies, challenge each other with "special offers" for new customers and, at the same time, incautious "remodulations" upwards for old customers who, through carelessness and negligence, do not monitor their contract.
Un perverse game, that of the operators, who are occasionally forced to dodge the Antitrust's spotlight on cartel suspicions: this is the case of the tariffs raised a few years ago with suspicious synchrony from monthly to 28 days, only to then backtrack due to imposition by the regulator. But the truth is that the contest is harming all the operators: the medium level of tariffs drops, so much so that in Italy it is the lower in Europe. Operating margins and profits are reduced progressively, investments suffer and in the end customers pay in terms of quality of service, as demonstrated by the delays in 5G networks.
Choosing the right profile
Discounts and promotions, but not for everyone. Especially if we are old customers. We still try to save, carefully examining the changes in offers to match them with our type of consumption. Voice calls are now "unlimited" in almost all contracts (even if with some pitfalls that especially concern Internet browsing, which we will discuss below) with many cases of full-bodied minutes included in the offer also for international calls, not only while we are abroad thanks to the partially free roaming obligation imposed by the EU but also for calls made from Italy to abroad.
The offers follow one another. Changing operator while keeping your telephone number continues, even today, to provide advantages compared to activating a new number, even if the tendency to steal customers from the competitor with blows of rock-bottom offers is gradually attenuating: the massacre on operating margins has evidently reached intolerable levels.
Beware of (fake) “unlimited” offers
Is everything clear, in any case, in the operators' offers? Not at all. The most insidious trap, also because it is unknown to most, concerns the contractual formulas that include phone calls, but above all data, with "unlimited" traffic. This is a formula applied with specific offers that are rather expensive or coupled, with more limited costs for our Sim, with a subscription for the fixed line of the same operator.
But if in landlines the “limitless” is really such, in mobile telephony it is never like that. You discover it, with some difficulty, by looking carefully among the contractual clause. So much so that one wonders why the regulatory authorities have not intervened to correct this practice, or at least to prevent the advertising of “flat” cell phone offers that are not so.
The trap concerns all managers, without exception, even if the hidden limits to the "unlimited" are applied with different criteria. But the method is common. In all contracts, among the many semi-hidden accessory clauses, there is one that commits the customer, in particular for “unlimited” data traffic, to a “lawful and correct” use. With the possibility for the operator to call the customer back, slow down the Internet browsing speed or even drastically limit the service.
The (real) limits imposed by operators
But in practice, how far can we go? To understand this, we need to slalom between the operators' web pages. Tim is still generous. The “legitimate” use of “unlimited” contracts includes a limit of 18.000 minutes per month, equivalent to 10 hours per day, and Internet traffic that does not exceed 600 GB per month, 20 per day. An abundant amount, even if “unlimited” is not there anyway.
Vodafone Italia, which is also passing under the ownership of Swisscom which will merge it with Fastweb in our country, in art. 2.5 of the General Terms and Conditions sets the threshold at "monthly data traffic volumes less than five times the average consumption of customers with homogeneous or similar offers". To find out what we are dealing with, we need to consult theperiodic adjustment “which takes into account the quarterly surveys” updated with similar frequency on the operator's Web pages. Currently the average consumption of this type of customer is “25 Giga per month”. The “legitimate” use in the current quarter must therefore remain, for data traffic, below 125 Giga per month. An easily achievable threshold. While for the “unlimited” item there is a ceiling of 160 minutes per day (two hours) and 1.250 per month.
WindTre is set on conditions similar to those of Vodafone, with a "tolerance" on excesses for "unlimited" data transmission that does not exceed three months. While Iliad limits “correct usage” reminders to voice traffic, offering no options for unlimited data.
Better, almost always, the “super-giga” offers
Practical consequences of all this? If we really need so many gigabytes of data traffic for our SIM, enough to exceed the thresholds of the so-called "correct use", it is better to choose one of the many offers that provide, at a cost that is still lower than the offers with "unlimited" data, a monthly giga package very high (in many cases above the threshold of "legitimate use") at a lower cost, even much lower. By scanning the offers of the operators, for example, you find a formula (let's take just for example a proposal from ho.Mobile, the second operator of Vodafone Italy) that includes unlimited voice traffic, albeit with the limitations of the case, and 250 GB of Internet browsing in 5G for less than 12 euros per month. Or always 250 GB monthly but without 5G (but only 4G) for less than eight euros per month by transferring the number from another operator. But the other operators, especially the virtual ones, offer similar offers, which they change rapidly in a game of continuous chase.
Instead of a landline, also for the Internet
All this has a consequence that should be taken into account even by those who are thinking of replace landline with a SIM inserted not in a smartphone (which can still be used as a wifi router) but in a real “cellular” router which performs the same functions as the “fixed” one connected to the twisted pair or to the fiber: it allows us to talk by connecting it to a normal phone and to surf with Wi-Fi and with the network sockets. All with performances that are often superior, if we are not reached directly by the fiber, to those of a data connection on copper cable and with much lower costs. The fake “unlimited” in this case can have heavy consequences. A sim with a lot of monthly gigabytes could be the solution, if we don't use it very heavily. We just need to be able to correctly evaluate our consumption profile.
But here there is afurther threat, which has more to do with technological evolution than with suspicions of incorrectness by operators. 4g (and in some cases also 5g) cellular routers that also include the classic landline telephone socket are divided into three types: those that use the now obsolete GSM network for voice, those that rely only on the 3G-Umts network for voice and those that directly use the latest generation 4g-Lte and in some cases 5g networks for voice.
In the first case we can be sure that with any operator for a few more years everything will work without problems: voice and data. In the second case the voice will not work with either Tim or Vodafone, which have recently completely abandoned the 3G networks while maintaining the old 2G, difficult to abandon due to the massive diffusion of technical devices in this technology, such as remote controls and alarms. With WindTre 3G still works, but its abandonment to free up frequencies useful for more advanced systems is also imminent here.
And the routers that use 4G-Lte also for voice? These could also have some problems with the voice: To use the Volte (voice over Lte) protocol, each type of router (brand and model) must be enabled in the operator's networks, as well as individual cell phone models.
In short, a tangled question. How to get out of it? The only sure solution is to first study the possible offers and then check with the operator which routers are enabled for both data and possibly voice. Only in this way will we avoid all, absolutely all, of the traps.
