Is Econet’s SMS Bundle A Viable Alternative To The WhatsApp Bouquet

Data has gotten pretty expensive or out of the reach of most common folk since all the networks revised their offerings. With this in mind, I couldn’t help but take a look at Econet’s SMS bundles just to get a feel of which option is cheaper if communication is your only goal.

Being an Econet user, I dialled *140# and selected the purchase
bundles option. Lo and behold some serious value was being offered through the
SMS bundles. For a $1 you get 250 SMSs and then for just $2 you get a whopping
500 SMSs.

Now of course, if WhatsApp is your primary communication
tool as it is for many of us you’ll understand that by going to SMSs you’re
sacrificing many things. For one group functionality goes out of the window in
the world of SMSs. Media functionality is not as robust as it is on WhatsApp.
But then these are tough times so austerity measures have to be adopted in
order to make ends meet.

Especially now when WhatsApp weekly bundles cost 3 dollars and you’re only getting 140MB. If that data allocation runs out as it might because of statuses and media you’ll probably end up using more than $3 for WhatsApp.

Get some work done

Another case that can be made for SMSs is simply the fact
that a hiatus from WhatsApp could help a lot of us become more productive at
work. SMSs are pretty boring; The interface is dull and because they are more
expensive, back and forth is largely reduced. No need to play cat and mouse
with your boss anymore. We’ve all done it before, that trick where you hear
someone approaching and hide your phone and tap away at your keyboard as though
you were the employee of the month. If you’re using the SMS bundle you don’t
have to do any of that pretending to begin with.

Slowing down fake
news

The last benefit I can see from going all in on SMS is the fact that falsehoods and misinformation will be slowed down drastically. I know saying “let’s not interact with something at all because there are some negatives” is not the best way of problem-solving but it is one of the many benefits there is to moving to texts over our current favourite messaging application.

Easier said than done

Maybe the one major flaw with the argument for text is that
whilst I say all of these things, I haven’t been able to ditch WhatsApp yet.
Maybe I’m waiting for some of the people I talk to on these platforms to take
this bold leap I am proposing or maybe I know that deep down no matter how
expensive this stuff gets I will still buy the bundles and continue playing cat
and mouse with my boss… *sigh*

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