The inhabitants of Latvia are increasingly willing to control and plan their expenditure, a telecommunications industry market research carried out by the mobile operator Bite Latvija shows. It says that in comparison with the previous year the control of personal expenditure and a possibility to accurately plan one’s personal expenses for mobile services have become even more topical than before.  

Bite Latvija Customer Care Director Oksana Stankeviča explains it saying that people have had a tough lesson during the economic crisis, besides, various additional services, provided by smartphones and the availability of the Internet in mobile phones, are used more actively.

“If you plan to receive a bill of five lats but at the end it turns out to be much larger than you expected, the surprise is unpleasant. Each of us could have a similar story – some of us have had an expectedly long chat with a friend who is just back from vacation, others have had lengthy conversations with their sweethearts, but others have paid huge bills because of their children’s craze for games or listening to music on the Internet using their mobile phones. To provide people with a possibility to avoid unexpectedly huge bills, we have started offering them an option to follow the expenditure in real-time. It means that a customer can set a limit for his or her expenditure and upon reaching it he or she receives an SMS message warning about reaching the set limit,” says Oksana Stankeviča.

Stankeviča also says that in future customers using the new Bite rate plans will have an option to completely disable the outgoing calls and SMS messages upon reaching the limit set by them.