Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
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Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
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Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#2This guy doesn't get consumer pricing psychology. It has been shown over and over again that consumers prefer fixed price, even if they have to pay more to get it. They don't want to be on a meter, they want a predictable budget. The telcoms don't set the dominant pricing model, the consumer does. There have been plenty of iterations of $/min and $/MB telcom plans already tried in the marketplace.
And telcoms would probably prefer a variable pricing model, makes their business model sane. Want to see a telcom exec head explode? Ask him if he wants more traffic on his network or not.
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#3This all sounds great up until I get to the "How?" part. All of his suggestions are sane and sound reasonable, but I don't trust any of the current data providers to implement any of them in a sane way.
>Ruthless transparency from the telco as to how much you’ll pay for every MB.
When have any of the telcos even been translucent when it came to pricing? They hide real prices in pages and pages of fine print and don't offer any details on taxes or fees until they print them on the bill after you've signed up.
>A price-per-MB that, off the top, feels reasonable.
... like the rates we pay for text messages? Or existing wireless overages?
>A price-per-MB that falls during the course of the month as you use more and more.
Again, I don't trust any of the existing data providers to lower prices ... ever.
>A lightweight API so that you can obsessively check how much you spent in the last week or hour or ten minutes. So that after a while you won’t need to.
I foresee SOAP or invalid XML/JSON or servers that mysteriously go down at the end of the month due to "unexpected demand."
These are great ideas, but I think we need new competitors in the market before any of them will get implemented in a mildly sane way.
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#4There are a number of things wrong with they way our current cellular network industry works in the US. The biggest issue IMO is subsidizing phones. When we pay phone bills, we're also paying for the cost of the phone. When we buy more expensive smart phones (which make excellent use of a data connection) we pay more via data plans. These data plans also have the cost of the phones built in.
From the carrier's perspective, grandfathered unlimited data plans are acceptable because the cost of the subsidies have already been recovered. More expensive newer phones require higher subsidies to be palatable to consumers, so data pricing is adjusting accordingly.
I would be happy to pay by the GB for my data if it were charged at the market rate, but it isn't. Cellular bandwidth is charged at the market rate + the subsidy recovery.
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#5The best thing in this article is the linked Jean-Louis Gassée piece:
http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/03/11/carriers-whine-we-wuz-r...
It has a breakdown of how much carriers are getting per smartphone customer. In summary, they don't have much reason to complain.
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#6This guy doesn't get consumer pricing psychology. It has been shown over and over again that consumers prefer fixed price, even if they have to pay more to get it. They don't want to be on a meter, they want a predictable budget. The telcoms don't set the dominant pricing model, the consumer does. There have been plenty of iterations of $/min and $/MB telcom plans already tried in the marketplace. And telcoms would p…
And the way to do that is: Fixed price for the first X GB, generous enough to cover ~90% of the users, variable pricing thereafter, and the aforementioned transparency about the status of your account. (In particular, text message alerts warning you when you've hit 90% of the limit, or some other active notification that you're going over, not just some abstract page that you could, theoretically, hit.)
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#7This all sounds great up until I get to the "How?" part. All of his suggestions are sane and sound reasonable, but I don't trust any of the current data providers to implement any of them in a sane way. > Ruthless transparency from the telco as to how much you’ll pay for every MB. When have any of the telcos even been translucent when it came to pricing? They hide real prices in pages and pages of fine print and don'…
While I understanding your general cynicism, may I observe that except for the easy API part, Comcast already does all this transparency stuff. (Different pricing plan, but it is transparent, and mostly adequate.) If market pressure could get Comcast to comply, I don't think it's that hopeless that it can get the telcos to comply. Your cynicism is perhaps a little too cynical.
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#8This all sounds great up until I get to the "How?" part. All of his suggestions are sane and sound reasonable, but I don't trust any of the current data providers to implement any of them in a sane way. > Ruthless transparency from the telco as to how much you’ll pay for every MB. When have any of the telcos even been translucent when it came to pricing? They hide real prices in pages and pages of fine print and don'…
While I understanding your general cynicism, may I observe that except for the easy API part, Comcast already does all this transparency stuff. (Different pricing plan, but it is transparent, and mostly adequate.) If market pressure could get Comcast to comply, I don't think it's that hopeless that it can get the telcos to comply. Your cynicism is perhaps a little too cynical.
Which Comcast transparency are you talking about? I had Comcast in mind specifically when I was writing my cynical post.
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#9I vote for a pre-paid per-MB pricing. And fair pricing, but yeah.
I think it is comparable to a gas station: You drive more, you pay more. You drive less, you pay less. There are many reasons to feel raped by the oil companies, but that there is no gas flatrate is not one of them (I dont want to share a flatrate with people who use way more gas/data than me).
Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?
#10> A price-per-MB that falls during the course of the month as you use more and more.
I sort of disagree with his pricing model. I think this is the best model for both data and voice:
Charge me an account fee (say $10 per month for a phone with every feature enabled. Caller id, voicemail, data, text messaging etc, etc) and then charge me per minute of call time, per text sent and per MB of data. Here's the important part: Charge a reasonable amount for each one of these.