Scarlet launches the first mobile subscription without call minutes and text messages ... but with lots of data!

21/06/2017

Does everyone really need unlimited calls and texts in their mobile subscription? In the age of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and FaceTime, the answer is clearly no. For all those who rely only on mobile Internet and no longer want to pay for texts and call minutes which they don't use anyway, Scarlet has decided to take the lead and shake up the Belgian market once again by launching Hi Five , the first subscription with zero call minutes and zero texts...but with lots of mobile data.

Two to three times more data than other €15 subscriptions on the market

For €15 per month , Hi Five subscribers receive 5 GB of data, i.e. two to three times as much as what all other mobile operators offer for the same price. With these 5 GB, Hi Five subscribers can communicate with their friends as much as they want through their favorite messaging apps, without having to pay for text messages or call minutes which they don't need.

Hi Five customers can of course still make calls and send texts but these will not be included in the basic bundle. The out-of-bundle rates are 5 cent per text message and per MB and 20 cent per minute for calls. Scarlet also offers the possibility of adding an option to the Hi Five subscription: 90 call minutes and 1,000 texts for €3 extra. Scarlet customers will therefore pay only for what they really need.

Hi Five, a product which responds to the change in usage patterns

These days you don't use your mobile phone the same way you did five or ten years ago. The usage figures on the mobile networks show that text and voice traffic is decreasing little by little, whereas data traffic continues to increase exponentially, driven by the success of smartphones and mobile apps.

Hi Five is a clear response to the main trends identified by "Digimeter 2016" , an extensive study on digital uses conducted on a sample of 2,164 people by the IMEC research center under the direction of Prof. Lieven De Marez (UGhent)

Among other things, this study shows five main underlying trends:

• The smartphone has emerged as the digital tool par excellence. It is considered as the most indispensable connected device by all sections of the population under the age of 60.
• The under 30s communicate less and less by telephone and e-mail. People in the "Disruptors" category, which represents a quarter of the population and is mainly made up of students and young adults under the age of 30, primarily use Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Snapchat to communicate daily with their family and friends. This trend is borne out by another study, the "Deloitte Global Consumer Survey 2016", which shows that only 31% of 18-24 year olds still use their mobile phone to make calls on a daily basis.
• Texting is gradually being replaced by messaging applications. 15-19 year olds are the first to now use Facebook Messenger (80.3%) and Snapchat (74.1%) more than text messages (70.8%) to communicate daily with their nearest and dearest. But they are not the only ones, as other customer groups are also abandoning texting: 33% of 15-29 year olds and 31% of 30-49 year olds claim to send text messages only if their messaging applications are unavailable.
• Texting will continue to lose ground in the five years to come. A third of those surveyed (32.8%) believe that within the next five years, they will have completely replaced texting by messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.
• Also, video calls are increasingly replacing traditional calls. More than one in five 15-29 year olds (21%) claim they prefer video calls to conventional calls.