>Zimran Ahmed wrote:
>> >Flat rates are the simplest form of pricing. Although they have
>> >generally been regarded as irrational, and economically and
>> >socially undesirable, they have serious advantages. Consumers
>> >like them, and are willing to pay extra for them. Further, flat
>> >rates are extremely effective in stimulating usage, which is of
>> >advantage in a rapidly growing service like the Internet.
>
>But not an advantage for Docomo, whose i-mode network has already
>had serious growing pains due to its unexpected popularity!
nice parallels with AOL, which grew dramatically with metered pricing,
but the REALLY started to grow when they switched to flat fee. They also
had tremendous growing pains then, so metered pricing sounds like a good
idea when you don't want the network to grow too fast.
>> personally, i am a fan of metered pricing since it gives content
>> providers a way to make money without having to resort to banner ads.
>
>Err....it does? I was under the impression the content providers
>really making money are doing so with monthly subscription fees.
it may not be the most lucrative way of making money, but if ISPs split
usage revenue with application service providers, the service providers
get *some* money without having intrusive banner ads, or pain-in-the-ass
registration services.
>I don't know about Japanese culture -- flat-rate pricing for food,
>alcohol, train travel and landline Internet access (tabe-, nomi-,
>nori- and kakehoudai) certainly seem to be popular -- but Japanese
>has no tradition of flat-rate *telephone* pricing. People are
>used to metered telephone access and have no experience of
>unmetered Internet access, so they don't know what they're missing.
interesting. i am not familiar with how japanese local calls and ISP
charges are measured, but it sounds like ISPs offer flat rate landline
internet access, but the customer still needs to pay for telephone use in
a metered way (so, maybe $x to the ISP, plus $y/min to the phone company
to use the Internet). Do you feel that widely available flat rate local
phone and internet access would result in more PC based Internet usage?
(I know that Japan has low PC penetration).
zimran
zimran@creativegood.com
212.736.2075
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Received on Tue Dec 5 18:53:32 2000