Just a my two cents since this has gone all heaty.
First, price war. Not all companies are able to join the price war cuz they actually set the benchmark for being the most expensive.
A few years back, Maxis flaunted out a prepaid plan called Hotlink Bagus offering the cheapest prepaid in the market. In less than two weeks, Digi called their new plan Digi 'Lagi Best' being few cents cheaper than the so called Bagus.
Therefore, it probably became a strategy to stick to Service & Quality Network, expanding Fibre and Zerolution services.
I'm a Maxis user, so prolly a lil Pro-Maxis here. But just opinions.
Maxis started One Plan, was successful until everyone else picked up the concept of giving unlimited calls and started price war. No doubt, Maxis wasn't quick enough to counter that, they started thinking sideways by offering One Roam and Zerolution.
There's prolly a few factors I put into consideration why they did not counter back that
1. They have a HQ in the centre of KL owning over 20 floors called Menara Maxis. Maintenance costs, Management costs hiring a new CEO back in 2014? from Vodafone prolly having top notch salaries and etc.
2. No matter how much they lower their prices, Digi or Umobile would prolly pick up the fight and eventually when no one else makes money, they wrap up like TIME and JARING. So much for consumer fun comparing prices now.
No doubt they're lots of ignorant users these days. Some like me are willing to spend a lil more for certain services that only Maxis offers, only because cases like my company pays my bills.
Multisim that allows data sharing and i slot an extra sim in my ipad to utilize the 5gb that i can never use up on my cheap handphone
Call centres that can handle bill disputes unlike celcom which outsources their call centre. You prolly have to walk in should you require a dispute.
But i must admit, it was some backfired plan to offer EM rockbottom price compared to WM. Maxis has always been a semenanjung brand and prolly wanted to win over EM.
The EM one plan has been ongoing since 2014 (used it since then) and the difference was RM 30. I was surprised to find it having a gap of RM90 now.
And another stupid idea to offer it as a retention deal. Wouldn't have caused this much trouble if they had maintained their 10~20% higher than OLO strategy all this while with a lil better service and network. But well prolly that so called 10~20% extra wouldn't be sufficient to cover up for their expenses and profit either
Yes the price war would never stop, but it doesn't necessarily means Maxis need to be the cheapest. Just at least reduce the gap on the price tag. Just imagine other providers already offering below RM50 package for 3gb...some 48/45/28. then there's Maxis with rm128 with what they claimed superior network. this superior or not superior to me are just talk and no concrete proof. I had lost my maxis signal several times while my other lines working as normal (if not super speed at least 15mbps) but at least the line was still there. maxis had the nerve to tell me they are having some maintenance for several months already..like seriously??