Who's on your Mylime?
So Bmobile is offering it's Mylime customers unlimited free text messaging and calls between the hours of 10pm to 6am, Sunday to Sunday. I must admit, it's one of the most wonderful feelings in the world getting something free from TSTT, no strings attached!
I'm wondering however... what are the implications of this new promotion? Not to Bmobile themselves, but to us, the citizens of T&T. In economic terms, nothing is free...there's always some opportunity cost attached, in some indirect way we're paying for it all.
As a population, I can almost guarantee that the aggregate amount of sleep hours has dropped. 10pm to 6am... sounds like a good time to be awake on a Friday night perhaps, but 7 days a week? Hundreds of us out there are on the phone this very instant (2:30am) chatting away with friends, family. significant others... or sending random messages. Its the lure of doing something we don't have to pay for. Except with lack of sleep of course. Maybe, if there was a way to know, work production has decreased during the day because of more people spending time on the phone during these seemingly ungodly hours.
Oh... T&TEC will surely benefit from this. Can you imagine how many times we all need to charge our cells now? We're gonna be seeing cell phones plugged into walls constantly during the night to facilitate this unlimited talk time & insatiable need for communication. Our electricity bills might go up, but who's going to notice that? Probably only T&TEC.
On the bright side though... we're having more communication! Finally people are not faced with having to say or hear "girl, I have only 5 mins left before meh hour up eh, so finish up wha u saying quick!". Since the pressure of paying is off, I'm sure a lot of relationships have miraculously developed, endured and flourished! All because of increased communication. Maybe in some small way, we're a happier bunch of people! (unless the lack of sleep offsets it)
Can there be too much communication? I can imagine those of you who are now forced to switch your cells off or turn them on silent because of the unnecessary barrage of messages shattering the silence of your 3:53am sleep. I'm going to guess that if this is the case, then you should count your blessings to be privileged enough to be one of the limited 5 of your friends Mylime list. Friendship is always a blessing.
So... I don't know. Maybe we're sleep deprived & wasting time on the phone, but maybe we're also more socially satisfied & gaining appreciation of the people in our lives. Who knows...
I'm not going to weigh the pros & cons... but I do wish the promotion will be extended to way beyond June 15th 2008! :) *crosses fingers*
