Guide of Telecom Products

Use instructions

In the telecommunications products observatory system you can use two services, «Search» and «Compare».

ΚAs you use each of these services, you will see that in the right part of the screen, use instructions and examples emerge, for each criteria and filter that you are asked to fill.

The search service works as follows: Depending on the criteria completed / selected by the user the system returns a subset of products from all telecommunication products stored. Products shown, meet the criteria that the user has declared. In the event that none of the criteria If all the user's criteria is not met by any product then no results are displayed.

Accordingly, the comparison service works as follows: The user can state the use that he makes, either entering some basic information, such as the talk time to all by the mobile phone or by providing detailed information in response to a series of specific questions, such as talk time consumption rate to international calls. The user can indicate the criteria that modify the subset of products to be returned, such as the choice of commitment type. Then, the comparative evaluation service, returns a list of telecommunications products and / or combination of products, classified in ascending order (estimated monthly average cost), by using the aforementioned user input and currently available on the system products. The estimation results by a simulation of user data in a 12-month basis. Note that system calculations take into account the current VAT but also any mobile subscribers fee where applicable. For the estimation made, a specific benchmarking modular algorithm is used, which has as a main function the costing of the use made, for products and / or combinations of products that meet the user's criteria.

There are 3 general rules:

In search service you can find all products and related offers that meet the criteria that you fill. These criteria are mainly qualitative. For example, you can ask for offers that a specific company offers for its customers in mobile telephony. Comparison service will sort the products based on the evaluation of the use cost. The estimation is generated by the information entered for monthly usage of yours. For example, you can classify all fixed telephony and fixed broadband access products (with nominal speeds of at least 24 Mbps and 2000 minutes), based on the cost use estimation.
The results of the comparison are indicative and it is assumed that they will not necessarily coincide with the corresponding figures in the billing accounts that you have on your hands. This is because each company follows its own billing system. EETT’s comparison service constitutes a billing system whose mathematical approach is publicly available, it has been given to the companies for comments and has incorporated any existing comments. The comparative evaluation method applied is objective and impartial but is not the only method that could be applied to these features, nor the proportional method applied necessarily by every company. Although the system classifies all products that meet the user's criteria, you have the opportunity to see the first 50. If you wish, you can use a series of filters that you are given in order to create a more suitable subset of these products.
In each generated result, you can view the product details or product combinations that it contains. The presentation is made in a uniform manner for all products of all companies and contains categorized information about them. It is a service, extremely simple to use. In every line, there is a generic title, for example, "Commercial Name" and next to it, the value entered by the company, appears for this title, e.g. "Great program". When necessary, this particular information appears to be grouped and nested properly. Certain buttons indicating "more" and "detail" tell you how to locate this information. For example, if (in a particular plan) fixed line destination calls and mobile destination calls, are charged in a different way, on the right part of the screen you will locate the "more" button for each of those call categories. If the same program has tiered pricing depending on minutes called, then on the right part of the screen you will locate the "detail" button. In any case, the product info presentation cannot substitute the information you can get from the company website.

In detail:

Select one or more services categories. Depending on your choice, more fields to be filled will be activated.
Next, choose if you would like to view specific programs for consumer or business. If you have no particular preference, keep the "All" option activated.
If you belong to a "special subscriber category", select one of the available categories, so that the system can take into account any special fees for the registered programs (in the system database) applicable to your case.
If you select mobile telephony , you will be prompted to complete talk time minutes filed (mandatory), that you make on a monthly basis. Also, you will be prompted to enter the number of messages that you send, based on your estimations (optional), and the amount of data you need, when you use your mobile to receive data from the Internet. The application gives you the ability to further analyze how you consume these minutes of talk time to mobile, fixed, international, roaming and intranet destination calls, in the case of business programs/plans.
You can enter further information for each destination category, for example: the average call duration, the call minutes for each category, the talk time for a particular provider for mobile or fixed destination calls for a specific program/plan, certain days or hours that you are interested in using the phone, countries that you are interest in.
! In all subcategories, talk time minutes should not exceed the minutes entered at the beginning of the scenario.
If you select fixed telephony , you will be prompted to complete talk time minutes, based on your estimations that you make on a monthly basis. You can also enter further info, in case you need a certain number of voice channels, ie the number of calls, incoming or outgoing that you like to perform simultaneously. You can also choose your contract duration (otherwise, keep the default value).
The application allows you to further analyze the way you consume minutes to fixed, mobile destinations, international or intranet calls, in the case of business programs/plans. You can also enter more detailed information for each category of fixed destinations (local, long distance), mobile, international destinations etc. such as: the average call duration, call minutes, i.e. the talk time for each category, the talk time for a certain fixed or mobile provider or a specific program, certain days or hours that you are interested in using the phone, the countries you are interested.
! In all subcategories, talk time minutes should not exceed the minutes entered at the beginning of the scenario.
If you select fixed broadband access, you can enter the contract duration, nominal data download speed or whether you are interested to include satellite access programs/plans. If you have no specific preference, you do not need to fill in the type of fixed broadband access desired.
In each selected service you are prompted to complete if the use characteristics entered concern:
- the maximum use (i.e. if in any month of the year, you do not exceed that use on a 12 month basis).
- the average use (i.e. if for 6 months the use is greater and for other 6 is less).
- the precise use (i.e. the use that you make each month).
Talk time for calls from mobile equals the sum of talk time to mobile and fixed line. If you do not fill individual talk time for mobile and fixed, then the application considers that 93% of the talk time results in mobile and 7% in constant (EETT 2015 data).
If you do not fill the average call duration to mobile, the application considers that it is up to 2 minutes.
If you choose mobile broadband access, you can enter the contract duration, the amount of data you wish the program/plan to include and the network technology that works for you as well. If you have no preference, you do not need to fill in the type of mobile broadband access desired.
If you select «Details» , you will see each program/plan’s characteristics in detail, the program that can be bundled with and programs bundled in order (for the system) to give this result. This step is important because a program/plan may include features that you need, but were not stated earlier (in use details completion)

Attention Points

Select at least one service (e.g. fixed telephony) to see the results of the comparison and to enter at least one numeric information for your use on this specific service (for example, 1000 minutes of talk use). Overall, you are given the ability to selectively enter more than 50 information.
Complete as much information as possible on the use of a service to get more accurate results.
Refer to your itemized bills to enter the actual monthly usage of telecommunications services you make and not the advertised, concerning the program you have. Unless you have at your disposal, detailed account (e.g. prepaid) you can use any of the available applications or other empirical method (in order to calculate your monthly use). You can also fill in the file provided by the system, upload it and view the results.
If you enter the advertised talk time of a program, the results will preview overcharged fees than the expected fee. This occurs where the advertised program has a minimum call duration different than a second.
The more the calls that are made, regarding shorter duration than the minimum duration charge, the more expensive the program/plan will be. The estimation is based on the statistical measure of the average call duration.
Example: A user enters a maximum monthly usage of 200 minutes talk time from mobile with no further information. A plan gives you 200 minutes of talk time with a minimum charge time of 1 minute. On average calls from mobile in Greece last two minutes. Then, based on the method used, 100 minutes will concern calls lasting less than two minutes and the remaining 100, calls lasting more than two minutes. About one in four minutes will be consumed in calls of less than 1 minutes. This means that they will be charged by the provider to be at least two minutes by the 200 paid, in prepaid program/plan or monthly fee. Therefore, about 50 of the 200 minutes stated by the user, would be equivalent to at least 100 advertised. Therefore, the user has to bear an additional cost for 50 calls, based on per unit cost.
The longer the calls that you make, the less actual difference there is, between the advertised and invoiced billing account, provided they do not exceed the available minutes.
If, the average call duration is larger than average (2 minutes) used in the application, then the results should be estimated on lower levels.