TeliaSonera will launch a shared data plan service allowing customers to share a bucket of data among multiple devices. The Swedish operator claims its shared data service, branded Telia Mobil Dela, is the first of its kind in Europe and will allow customers to manage up to seven devices via a single subscription.
"Telia Mobil Dela is a subscription Swedish families have been waiting for," TeliaSonera Sweden's head of mobility, Ulrika Steg, said in a statement. "Families have unlimited calls and they can use the data bucket much more efficiently by sharing it among family members' devices. They can also easily change the bucket size and add more gadgets if they want to."
Operators in the United States have been providing shared data plans since the middle of last year. Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility have attracted millions of customers to the plans and are using them to increase data revenues by encouraging subscribers to add more devices to their accounts. Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA also offer the plans for enterprise customers. Shared data plans are also offered in Canada, Japan and South Korea.
TeliaSonera's service, which includes access to the operator's LTE network, allows users to select a data bucket size from 2 GB to 10 GB, an amount that can be adjusted monthly. The main subscription starts at around €48 and includes 2 GB of data and unlimited calls, texts and MMS. Handsets are charged around an extra €17.90 while other devices, such as tablets, start from around €3.50 per month.
The operator said that more than two -thirds of all Swedes have a smartphone, with 20 per cent using data-connected tablets. Swedish families have on average more than three mobile subscriptions to manage, according to TeliaSonera.
For more:
- see this TeliaSonera release
- see this Total Telecom article
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