What can operators do to ensure that fee reductions are real and consumers understand clearly?

This year, speed increase and fee reduction have once again become one of the items in the government work report. "This year, the average broadband fee for small and medium-sized enterprises will be reduced by another 15%, and the average mobile network data fee will be reduced by more than 20%. The "number portability" policy will be implemented nationwide, and package settings will be standardized to make the fee reduction real and clear to consumers."

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In fact, in recent years, operators have made great efforts to increase speed and reduce fees. According to data from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile have completed the special task of increasing speed and reducing fees ahead of schedule, and the cumulative profit in 2018 exceeded 120 billion yuan.

Data shows that at the end of last year, the average unit price of China Mobile's mobile Internet traffic fell by 61% year-on-year, and the average unit price of international roaming traffic fell by 50%; China Telecom's fixed broadband unit bandwidth price fell by more than 40% compared with the end of last year, and the average unit price of mobile Internet traffic fell by more than 65%; China Unicom's average unit price of mobile Internet traffic fell by 57.4% compared with the end of 2017, and household broadband charges fell by 41%.

It is not difficult to see from the above data that the three major operators have really worked hard to increase speed and reduce fees, and have really given "real money" to users, but it is difficult to hear from consumers that they are satisfied with the increase in speed and reduction in fees. The reason for this is that in addition to consumers' desire for cheaper packages or even free packages, the operators' own fee reduction measures also have problems.

Looking back at last year's measures to speed up and reduce fees by the three major operators, it is not difficult to find that the international roaming service had the largest reduction in actual package charges. Except for Internet packages, King Card packages and other packages that require new cards, the reduction in other basic packages did not meet consumer expectations.

At the same time, in the process of speed increase and fee reduction, the operators did not adjust the original package charges, and a large number of original packages still exist. This gives users the feeling that the operators are just "doing the job" to launch a limited number of packages, rather than sincerely reducing prices. In particular, the "unchanged" fee setting of 5 yuan for 30M is more likely to make consumers distrust the operators' speed increase and fee reduction.

The author believes that if operators want consumers to feel that speeds are increased and fees are reduced, especially fee reductions, they need to re-examine all their package fee settings, simplify package types, and lower the fee levels outside packages so that consumers can understand the packages and feel the sincerity of the operators, rather than just launching a few new price-reduced packages.

In fact, before the speed increase and fee reduction, the thousands of packages offered by operators were criticized by consumers, and even many operators’ own business personnel were confused about how many packages there were and which package was suitable for which group of people. As the speed increase and fee reduction began, the operators did not change this situation, but only added new packages and reduced the prices of a limited number of packages, rather than completely changing their package settings so that consumers could understand the packages.

In fact, these situations have also been noticed by the government. In this government work report, the fee reduction has been reduced compared with last year, from 30% to 20%. New requirements have been put forward for package settings, requiring operators to standardize package settings so that the fee reduction is real and consumers can understand it clearly.