Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Lightening the load?
Random News tidbit of the day. "Pasaload" schemes, where you can transfer the load from one prepaid cellphone (in Eurospeak, a pay-as-you-go mobile topup) to another and get a small profit in return, may be investigated by the Philippine Congress.
According to Laguna Rep. Danton Bueser, because the "Pasaload" has a ridiculously brief validity period (72 hours before expiry), then consumers are forced to reload every three days.
"By providing for these unjustly short expiration periods, subscribers are arbitrarily compelled to overspend for cell phone loads within such durations predetermined by cell phone companies," the lawmaker said.
All well and good. I am surprised Congressmen are clued in to these sorts of issues, but then again they must do SOMETHING to while the hours away before the 3pm Maalikaya session.
Reuters has their own take on this "sachet marketing" scheme. Their leader paragraph tells of a girl who earns 5800 pesos and spends more money on text messaging than on her rent.
The punchline? She doesn't even own a mobile phone.
According to Laguna Rep. Danton Bueser, because the "Pasaload" has a ridiculously brief validity period (72 hours before expiry), then consumers are forced to reload every three days.
"By providing for these unjustly short expiration periods, subscribers are arbitrarily compelled to overspend for cell phone loads within such durations predetermined by cell phone companies," the lawmaker said.
All well and good. I am surprised Congressmen are clued in to these sorts of issues, but then again they must do SOMETHING to while the hours away before the 3pm Maalikaya session.
Reuters has their own take on this "sachet marketing" scheme. Their leader paragraph tells of a girl who earns 5800 pesos and spends more money on text messaging than on her rent.
The punchline? She doesn't even own a mobile phone.
Labels: news, philippines
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