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Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

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Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#11

Post by andrewaylett »

jerf wrote: post #6
jpadkins wrote: post #2

This 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.)

This. It's what I've got, pretty much, on my ADSL: 50Gb/month (doubling (again) next month) with a sensible per-gigabyte never-expiring top-up if I need more.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#13

Post by JumpCrisscross »

CookWithMe wrote: post #9

I 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).

Why would you prefer pre-paid over being billed at the end of the month? The former is lending your carrier money at zero interest on a monthly basis.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#14

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dkokelley wrote: post #4

There 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 perspe…

Or at least disentangle phone financing from data & voice.

Having financing and pipe compete independently would allow consumers to get a better idea of the (now implicit) financing rate they pay to have their phone subsidised while allowing more freedom for a financed phone, e.g. switching carriers without worrying about cancellation fees.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#15

Post by mindslight »

Erm, why are we talking about price per MB ? The per-MB rate is so intangible (1 cent? that sounds cheap!), it's a recipe for disaster. Current mobile usage/caps/etc are all in terms of GB, and that's what usage pricing should be specified in terms of.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#16

Post by gst »

yellowbkpk wrote: post #3

This 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'…

Telco companies in other countries are able to do this. Why shouldn't companies in the US then be able to offer such a model?

E.g., see "Bob" in Austria: http://www.bob.at/gigabob

The table (for one of their plans) says:

Included volume per month: 9 GB

Cost per month: 8.80 Euro

Each additional GB: 4 Euro

Fee to activate the plan: 0 Euro

Max. speed: 4 Mbit/s

Commitment period: None

I'd say this is pretty transparent to the user and there aren't really any "traps" in the plan (except that traffic gets a little bit more expensive once you are past 9 GB in a given month).

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#17

Post by michaelbuckbee »

dfrey wrote: post #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…

From a technical perspective it's all just bytes. The fact that we (myself included) think of calls, texts and data as three separate things just shows how far off the rails things have gone. It's like if my home internet bill was divided into Skype Minutes, Emails Sent and Web Data.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#18

Post by yellowbkpk »

gst wrote: post #16
yellowbkpk wrote: post #3

This 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'…

Telco companies in other countries are able to do this. Why shouldn't companies in the US then be able to offer such a model? E.g., see "Bob" in Austria: http://www.bob.at/gigabob The table (for one of their plans) says: Included volume per month: 9 GB Cost per month: 8.80 Euro Each additional GB: 4 Euro Fee to activate the plan: 0 Euro Max. speed: 4 Mbit/s Commitment period: None I'd say this is pretty transparent t…

I never argued that they couldn't offer such a model. I'm arguing that they won't because they're too averse to change and the short-term risk that they might lose money in the pursuit of more customers paying slightly less (or more?) in the long term.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#19

Post by huxley »

dkokelley wrote: post #4

There 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 perspe…

Not so:

http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/03/11/carriers-whine-we-wuz-r...

"The average ARPU for smartphones on AT&T's network is 1.9 times that of the company’s non-smartphone devices."

For an iPhone, the subsidy comes to less than $20/month in exchange for significantly more revenue per user. The carriers are making out like bandits and then claiming they are the victims.

From a carrier's perspective, grandfathered "unlimited" data plans are acceptable because it costs virtually nothing to keep the customer at their usurious rates.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#20

Post by runjake »

gst wrote: post #16
yellowbkpk wrote: post #3

This 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'…

Telco companies in other countries are able to do this. Why shouldn't companies in the US then be able to offer such a model? E.g., see "Bob" in Austria: http://www.bob.at/gigabob The table (for one of their plans) says: Included volume per month: 9 GB Cost per month: 8.80 Euro Each additional GB: 4 Euro Fee to activate the plan: 0 Euro Max. speed: 4 Mbit/s Commitment period: None I'd say this is pretty transparent t…

Because the US has a duopoly (AT&T/Verizon), for the most part. We have two smaller national carriers (T-Mobile/Sprint) and many regional carriers, but they are not competitive, nationally.

With the duopoly, they can maintain the status quo as there's no real competition or innovation going on.

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