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Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

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Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#21

Post by jpadkins »

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…

> Why shouldn't companies in the US then be able to offer such a model?

They don't have to because they are in a government regulated cartel. Classic case of regulatory capture. The only free market in the US is the wifi sprectrum, which is providing the most value to US citizens.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#22

Post by mrtron »

You really want price-per-MB?

Here is the current conditions for Rogers:

-Usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged in $10 increments. Additional usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged at $0.02/MB. U.S. data roaming is $0.006/kB and International data roaming is $0.03/kB.

Summary: local: $20/gb, US: $6000/gb, international: $30,000/gb (prices in Canadian dollars, basically on par with USD)

Oh, but the good news is they offer 'unlimited social networking'. If you use the right app on the right phone (I believe it is currently some horrible WAP applications), you get:

Unlimited browsing on select social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Photobucket and LinkedIn)

This will crush mobile startups. How can you compete with services that don't cost the user money?

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#23

Post by malandrew »

First off, if we do go with variable pricing, the last thing we want is values to be denominated per MB. There is too much cognitive load on humans to think in terms of MB quantities.

Second, variable pricing makes sense if those who use very little data get a discount off the amount this currently use.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#24

Post by jarek »

mrtron wrote: post #22

You really want price-per-MB? Here is the current conditions for Rogers: -Usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged in $10 increments. Additional usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged at $0.02/MB. U.S. data roaming is $0.006/kB and International data roaming is $0.03/kB. Summary: local: $20/gb, US: $6000/gb, international: $30,000/gb (prices in Canadian dollars, basically on par with USD…

Second bullet point:

"A price-per-MB that, off the top, feels reasonable."

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#25

Post by TylerE »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #17
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.

Well, they're just bytes OVER THE NETWORK. But once those bytes hit the telco at the other end, and go out over the POTS network, that's not free to the originating carrier.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#26

Post by jamii »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
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.

Because prepaid limits risk. You never end up at the end of the month with a bill for 100s or 1000s of dollars and at the first sign of trouble you can switch provider.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#27

Post by mrtron »

jarek wrote: post #24
mrtron wrote: post #22

You really want price-per-MB? Here is the current conditions for Rogers: -Usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged in $10 increments. Additional usage exceeding the data allotment provided is charged at $0.02/MB. U.S. data roaming is $0.006/kB and International data roaming is $0.03/kB. Summary: local: $20/gb, US: $6000/gb, international: $30,000/gb (prices in Canadian dollars, basically on par with USD…

Second bullet point: "A price-per-MB that, off the top, feels reasonable."

When there is an oligopoly of telecoms, you don't determine that. The existing market prices are what telecoms deem reasonable.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#28

Post by peterb »

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…

Isn't this what Ting is doing in the USA? They use the Sprint network.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#29

Post by billybob »

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…

I guess I don't get it either. "Fixed price" is always a floor, never a ceiling. How is that good for you?

My power bill isn't the same every month. My water bill isn't either. I know my patterns and roughly the monthly cost, and I can use less if money is tight.

You know how much cellular data I use per month? 0KB. Why? Because I don't want a giant fixed price add-on to my bill. If I could buy a smart phone, use WiFi 95% of the time, and spend $5 on data once in a while when I need it, I would use some. But I'm not jumping on a fixed price. I'm not paying for more than what I use.

Re: Data Pricing Sanity Maybe?

#30

Post by phamilton »

I use TruConnect for mobile broadband. They use a per MB pricing model with no monthly contracts. It's a little pricey for power users, at 3.9 cents/MB, but great for my once or twice a week usage. My monthly bill is around $10.

One thing the article mentions is a lightweight API to check how much data you used in the last ten minutes. Truconnect has an app, http://www.truconnect.com/manage-my-mifi/ , that let's you track that.

It works with any MiFi, but prices are tuned to Truconnect.

DISCLAIMER: I have a business relationship with Truconnect, as the author of the above app. I do however, eat my own dog food and find it to be a good service and a useful app.

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