UPDATE: Maxis made a mistake with the pricing, the Nokia N8 is offered from RM999, not RM899 as advertised.

With the coming Deepavali Festival, Maxis is lighting it up with a special giveaway for handset bundling. They are giving out FREE NX1 Spore Speakers with purchase of Nokia N8, BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Wildfire, Samsung Galaxy S and Motorola Backflip.

Prices of handsets remain unchanged over 24 months contract except for Nokia N8 which is now on offer for RM899RM999. That’s additional RM100 off from the normal 24 months contract pricing. This offer ends 7th November 2010.

For more details, check out the Deepavali offer page.

U Mobile's new Korean CEO telling you to Call the Shots

Nearly a year after U Mobile was made public, they are creating new waves with their new “Call the Shots” campaign. This time, U Mobile is proving that they mean business by introducing several new plans that caters to customer need.

One which was certainly to look forward to is U Mobile’s prepaid offering. It is no doubt that prepaid subscribers made up for the biggest chunk of the mobile subscribers and let’s take a look at what U Mobile has to offer.

The REAL deal

U Mobile 018 Prepaid Offering

Since U Mobile is a new comer, they would need to do something different to get a slice of the already dominated prepaid cake by the likes of Celcom, DiGi and Maxis. So their offering of 018 is simply:

• 0 – RM0 Starter Pack (FREE)
• 1 – 1 Second Block Billing
• 8 – 8 sen per SMS to ALL Networks

Following the footsteps of Happy (DiGi), U Mobile is also offering per second billing but with a rate of 0.8 sen/second which calculates to 48 sen/minute. The rate is nothing to shout about but it is quite on par with the rest of other prepaids considering that it doesn’t discriminate between on-net and off-net calls. With per second billing, 018 prepaid subscribers would be saving a bit from each calls which eventually save more in the long run.

Do you save with 1 Second Block Billing? (Jimat Duit)

Imagine if you made a 16 seconds call at a 48 sen/minute rate with 1 second block billing, compared to a 30 sen/minute rate with 30 seconds block billing.

A) 48 sen/minute (1 second block)

16 sec (16 blocks) x 0.8 sen per block
=12.8 sen for 16 seconds call

B) 30 sen/minute (30 seconds block)

16 sec (1 block) x 15 sen per block
=15 sen for 16 seconds call

From the calculation above, per second billing would actually save some money per call even when compared to a lower rate. The savings per call is due to a more accurate billing mechanism.

It should also be noted that video calls are also charged at the same 0.8sen/second rate as voice calls, so 018 prepaid subscribers could make more video calls without worrying about paying higher tariffs. Come to think of it, it is actually cheaper to make a  video call for several seconds than to send an MMS thanks to per second billing.

Rewards

To encourage people to top up, the 018 prepaid comes with a 20% Extra Bonus with every top up! This extra bonus is applicable for all customers, with no limited time period and for any amount, unlike Celcom Xpax limited time offer which is exclusively for new subscribers only.

Favourite Number Rates

Strangely U Mobile’s 018 prepaid is also different when it comes to favourite numbers as it does not offer anything similar to DiGi’s Friends & Family, Hotlink’s Active10 and Xpax’s 8pax. Since U Mobile 018 is still new, it would be more logical to offer exclusive rates for selected on-net numbers which encourages existing customers to convert their buddies & family members to the same network. Perhaps they should introduce this soon to gain more momentum. U Mobile, are you hearing this?

Conclusion

U Mobile’s 018 prepaid offering is something new and it is priced & structured competitvely. However there are some doubts on its network capacity and the lack of nationwide 3G coverage which is currently limited to Klang Valley. If it plans to capture the greater markets, U Mobile would need to accelerate its 3G coverage expansion outside the Klang valley or have a 3G Roaming agreement to Celcom.

Since the 018 Prepaid starter packs are FREE and comes bundled with RM1 credit, it is one of the hottest subzero offers to get and you’ve got nothing to lose just to try it out. If this prepaid is meant for you, it is always good to know that there’s a 20% extra bonus for each top up to stretch your ringgit. There’s no better time to launch this cost saving prepaid when the price of fuel and essential goods are on the rise.

Time to call the shots? Why not?

For more information, head to their website. They have just revamped their site with their usual style of web videos.