Operator TIM Brasil is introducing a new offer of bonus mobile data with multiple top-ups. When customers contract an offer for the second week in a row, they earn 250 MB of data. In the third week, the bonus is 500 MB. From the fourth consecutive week on, users earn an additional 1 GB every seven days. In other words, they will receive 2 GB or 2.5 GB of internet per week, as well as unlimited calls to TIM numbers, 100 minutes of calls to any operator in Brazil, free messages on WhatsApp without deduction from the data allowance and streaming music via TIM Som de Chamada or TIM Music by Deezer (depending on the offer).

Tarifica’s Take

This bonus data offer is intended by TIM to incentivize customers to renew their 1 GB and 1.5 GB prepaid packages, which cost BRL 9.99 (US $3.03) and BRL 19.99 (US $6.07) per week, respectively. If the customer renews continuously for a month or more, the bonus amounts increase to the point where the offer is very generous indeed.

Beyond simply encouraging topping up, the offers could have the effect of changing consumer usage habits over time and possibly aid in converting prepaid users into postpaid users. In fact, a user who wants this much data and does not use the prepaid offers intermittently as need be but rather uses them consistent, almost as if they were postpaid, really should be a postpaid user. TIM’s bonus data offer is structured more according to a postpaid logic than to a prepaid logic. If enough prepaid users take it up, it could have the effect of creating a new group of reliable high-data-demand, long-term subscribers. But if it is offering people more data than they need, on conditions that they do not need to meet, then it will not take off.