ROMANIANS' INNATE TALENT FOR SPECULATION How we made a business out of the 25-hour day of Telekom România

Telekom România has reached the height of absurdity, by restricting the calls available to customers who had "unlimited" plans, after they exploited a Vodafone promotion, which rewarded those who received calls on Vodafone phone numbers, with internet traffic or credits to buy new phones.

Essentially, customers arbitraged the two offers, demonstrating their innate speculative skills.

Specifically, owners of plans and pre-paid cards of the competing providers were invited to call owners of Vodafone pre-paid cards, which meant they would be awarded 10 MBs of traffic per minute and credits to buy new phones from Vodafone (10 credits per minute). The promotion was valid for owners of Vodafone cards and plans as well, except they would only get 1 MB of traffic per minute and 1 credit/ per minute to use for the purchasing of new phones.

What happened next? Several owners of cards or unlimited plans from Orange or Telekom (Digi does have a limitation on its "unlimited" plans) started calling Vodafone numbers (possibly their own Vodafone number strategically placed in an older phone), in order to accrue the points that would allow them to get phones for free. And the enthusiasm was so great that some people would brag in the forums of using the conference system, with three or four Orange or Telekom cards set to dial the same Vodafone number continuously, for "efficiency".

For instance, in order to buy for free a common Nokia 108 model with keyboard, which would cost 24 Euros in the Vodafone stores, it took 58,050 credits (in other words four days of continuous talking from other networks to Vodafone), and for a Samsung Galaxy A5 with a price of 261 Euros it would take 650,806 minutes from one Vodafone number to another Vodafone number were needed, or 65,080 minutes from other carriers to a Vodafone number (meaning 45 days of continuous phone calls).

In other words, in order to get a Samsung Galaxy A5 what was needed was a two month investment in an unlimited plan from Telekom România, meaning 2 x 19.31 Euros = 38.32 Euros. The profit would have been almost seven times more than the "investment".

Considering that the interconnection tariff was 0.96 Eurocents per minute, Orange and Telekom would start to take losses eventually.

For them, the 65,080 minutes of interconnection would cost 624 Euros, money which was supposed to be paid to Vodafone, a nice "return on investment" for the 261 Euros, which is what the phone would have cost when sold without a plan.

Overwhelmed by the situation, Telekom România couldn't come up with another solution than putting "limits" on the unlimited subscription.

A phone conversation between a Telekom customer and an operator of the company, posted on Youtube, took the social networks by storm, causing the hilarity as well as the confusion of web surfers, after the customer complained that the company suspended his plan because he talked on the phone for more than 24 hours in a day.

One of the pieces of information that we send to potential aliens is that a day on Earth is 24 hours.

The customer in question said that he paid for a plan with unlimited national minutes, therefore expecting, justifiably, to be allowed to talk as long as he wanted. The Telekom operator was unable to explain to the customer what the deal was with "the limited unlimited plan" and told them that they have caused a prejudice to Telekom by making more than 24 hours of calls in a day. Therefore, the customer said that he would take the recording of the customer support call to the Consumer Protection office, (see the transcript in the insert).

Following an enquiry by "BURSA", the representatives of the Telekom România group of companies told us that several prepaid cards and plans have been restricted, because they have performed daily "an extremely high level of mobile voice traffic".

They told us: "Following the occurrence of an unusual traffic of mobile voice calls, Telekom România has implemented a series of measures to ensure access to the mobile telephony services for all its customers, within optimal parameters. Some of the measures that were implemented include the identification and placing of restrictions upon a number of prepaid cards and subscribers who made a very high level of daily voice call traffic, particularly through the use of call waiting and conference calling, which indicated an artificial use of mobile telephony.

What we mean by unlimited traffic is a significantly higher volume of traffic, up to 80 times higher, in some cases, then the average traffic conducted by customers that benefit from similar plans. Thus, in certain cases, traffic has exceeded 24 hours of calls within a time frame of 24 hours, which was made possible by using services that allow the making of simultaneous calls, by using call waiting and conference functions".

By the time the newspaper had gone to print, the representatives of the National Consumer Protection Agency had not yet sent us an official position concerning the situation presented above.

Just to remove any doubts, according to the Explicative Dictionary, unlimited = which has no limits; huge, without measure. In other words, the unlimited plan means that the user is allowed to talk even 25 hours out of 24, or as much as they want, without measure. Therefore, it is not possible to abuse an unlimited offer, like Telekom claims.