Yesterday, Celcom has announced a list of new benefits for its top of the tier First Elite voice plan which include direct service hotline, priority customer service reception at BlueCube outlets, priority for new devices, and high life-like activities. However, the most exclusive benefits are reserved only for Celcom First Elite 1000 – a reference to First Elite customers that are able to consistently spend RM 1000 on their monthly bill for six consecutive months.
These exclusive benefits include concierge services, delivery to customer’s doorstep, and new device on yearly basis as a gift from Celcom. But let’s look back at the requirement – wow, a RM 1000 phone bill. As someone who have a monthly smartphone bill of less than RM 100, I’m intrigued on how one is able to rack up RM 1000 worth of charges into their phone bills. Let alone for six consecutive months.
[Image: Asian Development Bank, used under Creative Commons license]
Don’t get me wrong though; I’m not trying ridicule anyone that have such a steep phone bill. Surely there are plenty of valid reasons out there for someone to have a thousand ringgit phone bill such as high amount of long distance calls, multiple supplementary lines, and many more. Nevertheless, I’m still pretty curious about it and has made a number of simple calculations using the call charges that are listed on Celcom’s website to see what I would able to do with RM 1000 on the telco’s network.
If you are curious about it as well, just hit the Read More link below (if available) to check them out.
Local Voice/Video Calls and Messaging
The call charges on Celcom First Elite plan is rather simple to remember since Celcom charges RM 0.10 for each minute of voice or video calls to any local network. Same goes for each SMSes or MMSes as well.
With that, RM 1000 will give users around 10,000 minutes of continues voice or video call time which is also equivalent to around 6 continues days of talk time. Alternatively, users also able to deliver 10,000 SMSes or MMSes.
That is a lot of calls or messages, no doubt.
IDD Call
According to the listing here, the most expensive IDD call from Malaysia on Celcom network is to Diego Garcia – an coral atoll in middle of Indian Ocean that belongs to the UK government. The cost? RM 25.96 per min. Yup.
With that, RM 1000 would allow users to talk with someone at Diego Garcia continuously for around 38 minutes non-stop. Wow.
How about the cost to call Miss Maria Sharapova – Celcom First Elite’s ambassador – in US (she resides in Florida, not Russia)? At RM 0.18 per minute, RM 1000 would allow you to speak with her through Celcom IDD for 5555 minutes which equals to around 3 days and 20 hours. I’m not sure what’s Grigor Dimitrov opinion on that though. *cough*
International Roaming
Cayman Island, one of the country in zone 5 of Celcom’s international roaming. [Image: Jack Kennard, used under Creative Commons license]
Meanwhile, how much can RM 1000 able to benefit you when you are outstation? According to this list, the most expensive call charges to Malaysia while roaming are calls that are made from countries that Celcom grouped as zone 5 at RM 12 per minute. So, RM 1000 would give users 83 minutes worth of talk time.
Similarly, Celcom’s data roaming at zone 5 countries is pretty expensive too. At RM 40 per MB, the RM 1000 is only enough for a measly 25 MB worth of data. Ouch.
Supplementary Lines
So, all the calculations above is based on the usage of one single user and it is quite obvious that it is not easy for a solo customer to hit RM 1000 mark on his or her monthly bill. How about if one have multiple supplementary lines under him or her?
Well, let’s see: supplementary lines under Celcom First Elite is put under Celcom 1+5 plan which comes with a monthly fee of RM 15 per line. Based on that, let’s say this particular user has five supplementary plans in total cost him or her RM 75.
Then, let’s say all of them also subscribed to Celcom’s mPro mobile Internet package too with 5GB data quota which cost RM 88 per plan. In additional to the principal user him or herself, the total cost is RM 528.
At this point, the grand total cost for the principal user is RM 753. As there is still RM 247 before the bill reach RM 1000, it is still enough to pay for call or SMS charges worth RM 42 for the principal user him or herself as well as the other five supplementary line users.
After all that calculations, I hereby conclude that it is certainly not easy to accumulate RM 1000 on a mobile phone bill. Nevertheless, the fact that Celcom actually goes the length to offer the additional benefits such as concierge service and free device on annual basis for Celcom First Elite 1000 group of customers showed that such user base actually exists.
I’m amazed, really.
