Orange’s Spanish budget MVNO Simyo has added two low-cost, nighttime-only tariffs to its flexible portfolio of prepaid and postpaid mobile bundles. The operator, which offers up to 120 combinations of voice and data services, is offering 100 minutes of voice calls for €0.99 (US $1.13) per month and 1 GB of mobile data for €1.99 (US $2.27) per month, with the proviso that the bundles can only be used at night between 10:30 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. The MVNO said that the tariffs are available for both prepaid and postpaid customers and represent a first in the Spanish market. Simyo, which launched its 4G/LTE service in October 2015, recently announced that it had expanded its customer base to over 700,000.

Tarifica’s Take

Spain’s MVNO market is vibrant and growing, with some 9 million subscribers as of the end of 2015, a figure which amounts to almost 18 percent of the total mobile market in the country. In this climate, participants have to be aggressive and offer persuasive inducements to potential customers, and with this offer, Simyo—which has been steadily adding subscribers over the past several years—is doing just that. The allotments of voice minutes and data are very generous at the very low prices, which is bound to appeal to the budget-minded target demographic. The fact that they are available at night only, however, could be considered a strike against the bundles, but we think that the offer makes good sense for both operator and customers. Encouraging full use of the network capacity Simyo purchases is good business for the operator, and offering steep discounts on services during those hours does not involve the kind of opportunity cost that it would during daylight hours. For customers, while the timing may not be ideal for all, it is likely to appeal to many, and at the price, even some who are not night owls might be motivated to use them. Making it available on both a prepaid and a postpaid basis only adds to the win-win quality of this offer.