Every day, thousands of Guyanese purchase what they believe to be a month of mobile internet service. They hand over between $3,500 and $9,000 of their hard-earned dollars for a “30-day plan” and reasonably expect thirty days of connectivity. What they are actually purchasing is a data voucher that expires the moment the gigabytes run out, whether that takes ten days, fifteen days, or twenty. The remaining time is forfeit. The money is gone. And nowhere on the advertising page does it say so clearly.
Both One Communications and ENet are committing the same fundamental marketing misdirection. They sell time-labelled products, “30 days,” “monthly,” when what they are actually selling is a data voucher. The time period is merely the maximum window in which a customer can use a fixed data allowance. It is not a guarantee of service for that duration. That distinction matters enormously, because consumers associate a “30-day plan” with a month of service, the same mental model they apply to electricity, rent, or a postpaid phone bill. The word “plan” implies an ongoing service agreement. Neither carrier’s advertising clearly states that data service will stop when the gigabyte allowance is exhausted, regardless of how many days remain.
One Communications structures its “Move 30” and “Move 30+” offerings with prominent references to unlimited calls and SMS, language carefully constructed to create the impression of a generous, open-ended service. The data, the most valued component of any modern mobile plan, is strictly capped and terminated entirely upon exhaustion, with no speed throttling, no advance warning, and no fallback connectivity.
ENet mirrors this approach and, in one critical respect, goes considerably further. Its 90-day plan, priced at $9,000 GYD, allocates data in monthly cycles and explicitly forfeits any gigabytes unused at the end of each cycle. A customer who uses 30 of their allocated 50 gigabytes in a given month loses the remaining 20 permanently. They paid for it. ENet keeps it. This is not an administrative oversight. It is codified in Clause 12.13 of their Terms and Conditions. A customer paying $9,000 in good faith for a “90-day plan” could reasonably expect unused monthly data to carry forward within that period. The terms explicitly deny this, but burying such a consequential condition inside a lengthy legal document does not constitute fair or adequate disclosure. It constitutes a shield against accountability.
Guyana’s legal community must weigh in. Consumer protection principles are not abstract. Misleading commercial communication, where advertising creates a reasonable expectation the product does not fulfil, is actionable. This nation’s leading legal minds, in private practice, academia, and civil society, have both the standing and the obligation to assess whether these practices meet the threshold for regulatory intervention or civil remedy.
The Guyana Public Utilities Commission, which regulates both carriers, has the authority to act. At minimum, both companies should be required to state plainly on every advertisement and at every point of sale that data service terminates upon exhaustion of the allowance regardless of days remaining, and that unused data is neither refunded nor carried forward.
A data voucher and a monthly plan are not the same product. Selling one while calling it the other is not a grey area. It is a choice. And it is a choice that Guyanese consumers, regulators, and legal advocates can no longer afford to ignore.
SOURCE: Guyana1news research analysis of One Communications Guyana and ENet mobile plan terms and conditions, May 2026
