Maxis has always been a leading player in the mobile prepaid scene with Hotlink. To maintain its footage in prepaid, they had revamped Hotlink with several exciting new plans that would shake up the competition.

Hotlink now has 4 plans available, namely Basic Plan, Extra Plan, Sabah & Sarawak Plan and youthclub. Each plans have its own purpose to target specific prepaid segments. Let’s take a detail look at the plans.

New Basic Plan

The gap between postpaid and prepaid is getting closer due to heavy competition by all players. Now Hotlink offers 33 sen/minute for on net voice calls (Same network) and 39 sen/minute for off net calls (other networks). For SMS, it is charged at 7 sen/SMS for on net and 15 sen/SMS for off net.  

Video calls are charged at the same rate for on net calls at 33 sen/minute however of net video calls are charged at a higher rate of 98 sen/minute. Since video calls doesn’t seem to be popular, they should have just offer the same rate as normal voice calls. 

MMS and Data charges however are quite standard at 25 sen/MMS and 1 sen/KB of data transfer. Data charges are at half rate at 0.5sen/KB during off peak hours from 12:00AM to 7:00AM. For the basic plan, all calls are charged at the standard 30 second billing block.

More info on Basic Plan here.

New EXtra Plan

For those who often make longer calls, there’s Hotlink EXtra plan that offers lower rate after the 1st minute. The first minute is charged at the same Basic Plan rate, but on the 2nd minute onwards, the rate is reduced as low as 25 sen/minute for on net and 28 sen/minute for off net calls. Video calls are cheaper too for on net calls but off net calls are still charged at normal rate of 98 sen/minute.

The EXtra Plan sounds all good but the catch is that all calls are charged at 60 second biling block instead. This simply means that shorter calls of a few seconds would be charged as a full minute.

More info on EXtra Plan here.

Sabah & Sarawak Plan

For Sabah & Sarawak customers, Hotlink gives them a different offer. The Hotlink Basic and EXtra plan is not available at the other side of the South China Sea but they are instead offered the Sabah & Sarawak Plan.

Hotlink’s Sabah & Sarawak plans offers a fixed rate of 33 sen/minute for voice calls to all networks. The rest looks pretty much the same as the standard Basic Plan enjoyed in West Malaysia. It is also shown that the graphic from the Sabah/Sarawak plan page suggest that it charges Video Calls at 33 sen/minute for other operators, but we suspect this is a typo error and could be 98 sen/minute instead. All calls are charged at 30 second billing block.

We believe that Hotlink employs a different rate strategy for East Malaysia due to its later appearance. They have yet to made an impact here, thus offering the same rate to all networks. For those who are thinking to buy this and use in West Malaysia, you won’t get to enjoy the same flat rate to all networks as Hotlink will automatically switch to Basic Plan if you use the Sabah & Sarawak plan outside its intended area. 

More details on Sabah & Sarawak Plan here.

Hotlink youthclub

A huge chunk of the prepaid users are normally first time users, especially students. This segment is crucial for telcos to capture, as student/college users would eventually want to keep the first mobile number with the potential to migrate to postpaid when they start working. That said, Hotlink has introduce a youthclub plan targeted for the student/college crowd.

Calls are extremely low from only 12 sen/minute for on net and 15 sen/minute for off net voice calls. While SMS is charged as low as 1 sen/SMS for on net and 5 sen/SMS for off net. All video calls are also charged at the same rate as voice calls. 

Despite having a low rate, all calls are still charged at 30 second billing block as well. All these are calculated as more savings for students, where cost saving is always welcomed during these economic times. 

On validity, the youthclub also boast no credit expiry up to 4 years, provided that you top up a minimum of RM10  per year. This is a new breakthrough we’ve seen for a prepaid in Malaysia and it is lower than Happy’s previous low prepaid validity cost.

Hotlink isn’t the only one introducing a college targetted plan as DiGi has its D’Campus and Celcom has its U.O.X. As comparison, Hotlink shows the rate table below:

To enjoy this offer, you’ll need to be a student in Malaysia with a valid student ID which would be verified upon purchase. Hotlink also notes that CampusZone rates will no longer be valid after 25th May and we assume it would be superceded by this youthclub offer.

More details on youthclub here.

Rate Comparison

Conclusion

Hotlink has done a great work in its reposition of its prepaid plans and we believe that their youthclub will go down well with the student/college market. The youth market has always been Hotlink’s forte when they started off with their Activate Your Life motto. Without a doubt, they are bring back the youth focus in its prepaid and this is obvious as Hotlink is now reusing back the activate YOUR life motto in the youthclub. 

For more info, head on to Hotlink’s website.