Tru lowers data pricing in the USA to around $.17/MB

[bartolo5]

You have to love how Tru will lower their pricing and will not bother about updating their site for a while. I've been tracking their prices for data in the USA for a while and they were set to a pretty hefty $.50/MB. However today I saw this tweet from truphone that made me wonder (dated jan 5th):

@stephenfry Great to hear you're getting around mad roaming charges with Maxroam. Our data 10p/MB in AU/US or £5.50 in Kenya (Maxroam £7.60)

So I went and used some data on my US home based Tru SIM and sure enough it's not $.50/MB anymore. After some usage my online account showed:

1415xxxxxx INTERNET 21/01/2011 01:51:38 4.39 MBytes 0.75 DATA

That turns out to be around $.17/MB. Suckily enough, Tru will charge you 100KB minimum PER CONNECTION, so if your phone establishes and disconnects a data often youll pay more. No idea why Tru chose this sort of pricing mechanism but they sure need to change it, period. Charging per data connection is way too 1999.

And $.17/MB is actually a lot nicer than half a buck, but still $170/GB!

[adam917]

In 1999 was the minimum increment even that high for typical GPRS rates (I think think this was available in the US yet, so how was it in, say, the UK)? Wasn't it all just pay per use & just simply high per-KB rates due to the mentality that only basic text was passing through the connection? 100 KB on a text-only WAP site is a lot of data. Each page works out to either 1 KB or less.

[bartolo5]

Originally Posted by adam917

In 1999 was the minimum increment even that high for typical GPRS rates (I think think this was available in the US yet, so how was it in, say, the UK)? Wasn't it all just pay per use & just simply high per-KB rates due to the mentality that only basic text was passing through the connection? 100 KB on a text-only WAP site is a lot of data. Each page works out to either 1 KB or less.

I'm pointing out more the fact they´ll charge you for every connection than the actual incremental amount of data. These days is almost impossible to know when your smartphone is connecting or not connecting to the net, so a per byte tariff sounds a lot more fair to me.

[dg7feq]

yes, but the reality is that in most networks in most countries they will chunk you at least 10k when not even 100k per connection minimum

[Bossman]

For the last 2 weeks or so, every time I turn my phone on. I see a $0.17 charge for sms sent to 453. I am 100% sure I did not send an sms. Anyone have a clue. Not a biggy, so I did not bother to contact Tru, as I will use up my remaining credit when I travel in March.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
13126xxxxx 453 18/01/2011 01:42:32 0.17 SMS Sent
13126xxxxx 453 11/01/2011 09:39:40 0.17 SMS Sent
13126xxxxx 453 08/01/2011 03:52:24 0.17 SMS Sent
13126xxxxx 453 06/01/2011 10:11:34 0.17 SMS Sent
13126xxxxx 04/01/2011 21:41:23 00:00:30 0.00 Received from 1703xxxxx
13126xxxxx 453 01/01/2011 17:34:22 0.17 SMS Sent

[bartolo5]

Truphone has now updated their rates on their site. Tru rate checker

Data per MB $ 0.17

We were right all along. They weren't

[rfranzq]

They seem to charge by 30 second increments--at least the first 30. So I show and have shown 9 cents a call for '30' second calls. I really have not tried longer calls to see what happens.

Let me add that I now that I tested with a call from a Tru to a Tru and that 55 and 56 seconds calls both charged 16 cents. This would seem to mean that it is a 30/1 second method of charging for calls.

[tux]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

They seem to charge by 30 second increments--at least the first 30. So I show and have shown 9 cents a call for '30' second calls. I really have not tried longer calls to see what happens.

Let me add that I now that I tested with a call from a Tru to a Tru and that 55 and 56 seconds calls both charged 16 cents. This would seem to mean that it is a 30/1 second method of charging for calls.

They bill for the first 30 seconds and then second-by-second