Blyk evaluating free data for subscribers

Fascinating bit of news in from Ricky, our BlykWatch correspondent (the next edition is coming soon) but I wanted to bring you this now.

Blyk, the ad-funded MVNO, is evaluating the possibility of offering members free data to go alongside their existing free minutes and texts offered to each member.

I think this is a critical requirement for Blyk to compete against a lot of the mainstream mobile networks, particularly when the young demographic (Blyk’s target) are getting more and more interested in data.

I had a look at the Surveymonkey survey they’re running and took a screenshot. Excellent to see them responding in this manner, isn’t it?

I’ll be interested to see what the results are. For example, question three there says ‘What would you use it [free data] to access?’ and goes on to list social networks, news websites and so on. At no point does it mention QIK (i.e. live video streaming) or ShoZu (sending your media to the web) or the like. I wonder.

I really would like Blyk to move to an entirely free model. Although I’m sure that is a big ask (in the context of covering costs), I think it would be a primary motivator for the target customer base and it would entirely negate a lot of offerings from mainstream operators. e.g. 43 inclusive minutes (I think, from memory, that’s what they offer subscribers, per month) is entirely arbitrary so it’ll be slightly annoying for them to offer 4.567 meg per month inclusive. This target demographic works much better on ‘unlimited’ (with strings).

Anyway, good to see them being responsive!