A move that will bump data quota up to five times more than previous allocation, Maxis in an unprecedented effort to regain market confidence, sent out SMSes to over 1 million of its postpaid subscribers informing them their data quotas has been automatically upgraded at no extra charge. The upgrade will take effect immediately and covers users on MaxisONE, Surfmore50 and MaxisONE Business plans.

Of late the telco operator has been receiving flak from its customers for lack of transparency, when new users sign up they were given much better plans not listed and those cancelling the service were also treated with sweeter packages. This caused a backlash among long time users who raised their dissatisfaction on social media. Will the newly unveiled plan that is giving much more data to all postpaid customers quell the murmurs?

Lets have a look at the new plans; 

Those on the MOP 98 will have a data upgrade to 5GB from 1GB a five hold increase, while the rest receive an approximately three hold jump. For users on the high value plan MOP188, will now receive an additional 13 GB worth of data capping at 20GB nett, with no strings attached. That means your data full data is available anytime of the day/week. Additionally Maxis is also giving 5GB for video streaming that will not eat-up into your existing plan.

But there’s more, Maxis unveiled new shareable DataPools, which allows customers to share all the data within the family that can subsequently be shared by all. The pooled data can also be utilised while roaming overseas. See illustration below.

This however has to be utilised within a month or each billing cycle, CEO Morten Lundal adds “Unlike our competitors, we are not just giving great short-term offers or more data to only new customers. We are automatically and permanently upgrading for free all our MaxisONE plan customers, in which we are proud to have passed one million this week,”.

Quality Vs Price

The perennial question, with the announcement would the 1 million users who left Maxis network since 2015 come back? Liveatpc.com spoke to a long time user who has been with Maxis for more than a decade, ” I have not got any additional benefit from Maxis and I have been with them like…forever, but who else can offer good customer service and strong coverage like they do..I hope I am those who will get data upgrade”. So its appears that customers continue to stay with the network due to its robust coverage and superior quality, a premium some would say that they are willing to pay extra for. Maxis has 2.2 million people on the 4G network which has now expanded to 74% of the population, a notable strong reach among the competition.

Given the fact the others really need to push their service level and coverage level up, Maxis still looks the better bet with an overall proposition. Celcom recently announced its premium plan, giving customers 18GB on First Platinum for RM150, the catch..its 9GB weekdays + 9GB weekends, Digi is still expanding its 4G LTE infrastructure and its customer service is questionable (had a horrible experience personally), while U Mobile riding on Maxis network, has a long way to go before getting its end to end solutions top class to take on the Big Three. (look out for our PC.com comparison on these telcos in our May issue)

Its easy to quit a network and port over, but to which operator…this would highly depend on the consumer itself. First you need to ask the question what kind of user are you and which demographic you belong to,  while there are numerous plans that offer cheap data, you need to ask how consistent can you surf on the band, if it comes with unlimited voice calls, you will have to find out their network coverage and how many users are on it. Before jumping on big advertisement that state the lowest price do a comparison and read comments on forums and social sites. Study your usage habits and commuting patterns, the last thing you need is constant downtime and slow uploads.

The best two network coverage in the country still belongs to Maxis and Celcom having since invested millions on the infrastructure will no commit additional RM1.3 and RM1.2 billion on capital expenditure to build the network strengths for 2016, so your signal and quality can only get better.

But their entry point and plan bundles are not as sexy at first compared to cheaper alternatives, a balance consumers will have to consider while the price factor is a main concern users will also need to look at quality, coverage, service and consistency.