Last Wednes­day, bmo­bile dis­con­tin­ued its Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) da­ta sys­tem for pre­paid cus­tomers.

In mes­sage to cus­tomers which was post­ed on its web­site and sent via text to pre­paid cus­tomers, bmo­bile said, “Start­ing April 2, 2025, Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) da­ta will no longer be avail­able. In­stead, you’ll have the free­dom to choose from a va­ri­ety of af­ford­able da­ta bun­dles that best suit your needs. When you top up, the cred­it will be added di­rect­ly to your ac­count bal­ance. You can then choose the da­ta bun­dle that fits your needs, en­sur­ing you get ex­act­ly what you pay for, on your own terms.”

Kashif Greaves, as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent, con­sumer sales at TSTT ex­plained, “The de­ci­sion to re­move pay-as-you-go da­ta was guid­ed by cus­tomer feed­back. Our cus­tomers have con­sis­tent­ly ex­pressed a pref­er­ence for greater con­trol and pre­dictabil­i­ty in man­ag­ing their mo­bile da­ta. This was a ma­jor pain point, and we recog­nised the need for a more trans­par­ent and con­trolled ex­pe­ri­ence. This change en­sures that every pre­paid cus­tomer knows ex­act­ly how their cred­it is be­ing used, elim­i­nat­ing un­ex­pect­ed de­duc­tions and pro­vid­ing more con­trol and greater val­ue.”

This change would sug­gest that pre­paid cus­tomers who would pre­vi­ous­ly see the funds de­plete once their mo­bile da­ta op­tion was on, but not as­signed to a bun­dle, should not see a dip in their mon­ey in such a sit­u­a­tion.

Greaves added, “As mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy ad­vanced, the de­mand for al­ways-on da­ta ac­cess grew ex­po­nen­tial­ly, fu­elled by rapid de­vel­op­ments in the smart­phone mar­ket. How­ev­er, this surge in­ad­ver­tent­ly led to back­ground apps con­sum­ing da­ta—of­ten with­out the de­vice own­er’s knowl­edge. By re­mov­ing pay-as-you-go da­ta, we’re en­sur­ing that cus­tomers have full vis­i­bil­i­ty, greater flex­i­bil­i­ty, and more con­trol over their da­ta us­age.”

He said, “This shift re­flects our com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing a seam­less and cus­tomer-cen­tric mo­bile ex­pe­ri­ence.”

On Sun­day, bmo­bile ends its lega­cy da­ta pack­age for its post­paid cus­tomers, who are be­ing asked to pay 14.61 per cent more to be up­grad­ed to its Ex­treme Plus plan, which the mo­bile ser­vice provider of­fers more val­ue.

In a no­tice to its post­paid cus­tomers in March, bmo­bile said the 4G Pre­ferred Plan, which costs $392.63 in­clud­ing VAT, will be re­tired ef­fec­tive April 6, when those cus­tomers would pay $450 VAT in­clu­sive for its Ex­treme Plus plan.  

The no­tice to cus­tomers said the up­grad­ed plan in­cludes 450 gi­ga­bytes (GB) of da­ta, free bmo­bile calls, free any­where min­utes, free b-da­ta, rollover da­ta and any­where min­utes, and 3 GB of roam­ing da­ta.

Bmo­bile’s post­paid cus­tomers al­so have the op­tion of up­grad­ing to the Elite pack­age, which $650 VAT in­clu­sive and pro­vides, in ad­di­tion, 800GB of da­ta and 10GB of roam­ing da­ta.

“While on­ly a small per­cent­age of cus­tomers are im­pact­ed, we are com­mit­ted to mak­ing this tran­si­tion as smooth as pos­si­ble while con­tin­u­ing to de­liv­er the best val­ue and ser­vice to all our cus­tomers,” Greaves ex­plained.

In its quar­ter­ly re­port for the third quar­ter of 2024, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) re­port­ed that T&T had 1,787,400 mo­bile voice sub­scrip­tions with 1,454,500 be­ing pre­paid and 332,900 be­ing post­paid. That means 18.62 per cent of the mo­bile voice sub­scrip­tions were post­paid and 81.38 per cent were pre­paid.

Com­pared to Sep­tem­ber 2023, the TATT da­ta in­di­cate that to­tal mo­bile voice sub­scrip­tions de­clined by 11.66 per cent from 2,023,500 to 1,787,400.

Post­paid mo­bile voice sub­scrip­tions de­clined by 33.92 per cent, drop­ping from 503,800 in Sep­tem­ber 2023 to 332,900 in Sep­tem­ber 2024.