The Telecommunications Company of Cuba S.A. launched the long-awaited combined voice, minute and data plans on Thursday. At four in the morning on August 19, the new option was activated, which, without increasing prices, now provides better and new Internet access options for Cubans.
The new combined mobile phone plans and their cost are: Basic Plan, 125 CUP: 600Mb + 800mb LTE + 300mb for national navigation, 15 voice minutes and 25 SMS. Pan Medio, 250 CUP: 1.5Gb + 2Gb LTE + 300MB for national navigation, 35 voice minutes and 45 SMS. Extra Plan, 500 CUP: 3.5Gb + 4.5Gb LTE + 300Mb of national navigation, 75 voice minutes and 80 SMS.
In addition, the 14Gb LTE Plan (4Gb for all networks and 10Gb LTE) was renewed, which until yesterday had a cost of 1125 CUP.
Now it costs 950 CUP and has 4Gb + 12Gb LTE, and maintains the 300 Mb of national navigation.
All plans remain valid for 30 days, although the terms for activating this period are now changing (more on that in a few paragraphs below).
Before, comment that according to Lázara Mairén Jiménez Ruiz, Director of Operational Marketing at Etecsa, to form these plans, customer requests have been taken into account.
The young executive indicated that as usual, there are two moments in the year in which the company concentrates the largest commercial actions: summer and the end of the year.
Thus, he recalled that from July 23 Etecsa launched the promotion for the Nauta Hogar service, which will run until August 31, through which customers of this service can navigate with the rate of 6.25 CUP the extra hour of their Nauta counts from 12 at night to 12 noon.
In addition, she highlighted the permanent reduction of the price from 2.25 CUP to 1.00 CUP for national SMS, and the also permanent reduction of the price from 17.50 CUP to 12.50 CUP per hour of international navigation with permanent nauta accounts.
Regarding the new combined mobile phone plans, he commented that Etecsa has prepared for this moment, as more and more Cubans are accessing the internet in the midst of a situation conditioned by the pandemic that has put telecommunications at the center communicated from a distance is essential for families.
One of the purposes with these plans, Jiménez Ruiz said, was to maintain price ranges while maximizing offers.
That is why now more megabytes are offered for the same price, in addition to minutes and SMS. If we analyze the new plans and compare them with their predecessors, the 125 CUP data plan (now Basic Plan), adds 200Mb in all networks and 300Mb for the LTE network; the data plan of 250 CUP (now called Medium Plan), increases 500 Mb for all networks, and the same amount in the LTE network; and the data plan of 500 CUP (Extra Plan), adds a gigabyte in all networks and 1.5Gb in LTE.
Of course, the added value of these plans is that they all incorporate minutes for calls and SMS, something unprecedented in the country until now. Although there are also other improvements: those who are not enabled to navigate 4G or live in an area where the coverage of this technology has not reached but regularly buy data packages, now accumulate those LTE resources.
Once you are 4G-enabled or in the area of that data coverage, accumulated resources will be available to you if you have a valid data package. He said that in a recent exchange through social networks regarding this issue, the average of the Cuban proposals was aligned with the offers launched today.
Another novelty: now with the USSD code * 222 # the client will have the information of all the current resources.
The purchase menu also changes: before the options Data, SMS, Voice and Friends Plan appeared. Now the item Plans (data, voice and sms) is added to that menu, which is the one that gives access to the purchase of the combined packages. With these new combined plans, the data plans that were in the price ranges of 125 CUP, 250 CUP and 500 CUP disappear.
Therefore, the 100CUP 1GB LTE package, the 200 CUP 2.5Gb LTE package, and the aforementioned 16GB package will remain as data packages. Let's talk now about the validity of the new combined plans.
We already said it is 30 days. Now, as a novelty, they are activated with the use of any of the three resources: transmit data traffic, send SMS or calls received, made or collect.
Regarding the validity of the resources, Etecsa has somewhat simplified the complex network of resources that it offers.
According to their managers, the idea is to continue simplifying even more for the future. But let's explain now how the validity works: A combined plan lasts 30 days for all your resources: voice, SMS and data. If another combined plan is purchased before it expires, all those resources