(keitai-l) Re: keitai-l Digest V2 #13

Ren,

I think the original poster, Zimran, actually meant that metering of any
sort (by time or by packet) reduces usage, compared against flat-fee.
Flat-fee means that you charge a fixed cost per month.

One argument is that AOL's usage took off after they removed their
time-based fee structure. While I cannot deny the research, I am not
confident that it applies to the situation where bandwidth is very narrow
and expensive, as is the current network. In AOL's case, they jammed up
their modems for several weeks after the change. They did manage to upgrade
capacity, but at a much lower cost and faster timeframe than NTT Docomo
could reasonably achieve.

Regards,
Greg


---
  Gregory Tucker
  Tokyo, Japan
  mailto:tuckerg@acm.org

  These opinions are my own.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net
> [mailto:keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net]On Behalf Of Renfield Kuroda
> Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2001 7:39 PM
> To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
> Subject: (keitai-l) Re: keitai-l Digest V2 #13
>
>
> Without getting in a philosophical argument, charging by time on a
> packet-switched cellular network makes little sense for several reasons:
>
> * Cellular networks are inherently unstable (often drop and reconnect)
> * Packet-switched network means the phone is always on
>
> So, do you charge a user for just leaving the phone "on" all the
> time? Also,
> if you break down time charges to 1 minute intervals, and the phone
> disconnects and reconnects several times a minute, does the user
> get recharged
> for every connect (as has happened on some WAP networks now)?
>
> More realistically, I can image from a business perspective that
> voice calls
> become free (commoditized) in order to drive users to use value-added data
> services. Also it's possible to imagine charges for data-related services,
> regardless of the quantity/time of data used.
>
> r e n
>
>
>
>
> Zimran Ahmed wrote:
>
> > >What makes you think this? I was thinking the same thing. To browse the
> > >web on a computer (desktop, laptop or handheld) using a
> mobile, it seems
> > >to be much cheaper to pay by the minute than by the packet,
> although that
> > >of course could change if want to look at one page for a long
> time etc. I
> > >guess the packet pricing was made for i-mode as we know it now
> so perhaps
> >
> > pricing has interesting consequences for experience. Any sort of
> > *metered* payment, either per packet or per minute, reduces usage
> > substantially
> > (http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/history.communications0.abst).
> > i-mode has seen some good usage, but it is likely that had
> DoCoMo adopted
> > flat-fee pricing, usage and uptake would have been even faster (I'm not
> > advocating that they should have done this, just making an observation).
> > AOL experienced a similar thing when they switched from per-minute to
> > flat fee. AOL usage had grown very quickly, but it *really* mushroomed
> > when they made the switch.
> >
> > As for is charging by minute cheaper than charging by packet -- it
> > depends on the price per minute vs. the price per packet. Here
> in the US,
> > where most carrier charge by minute, users feel time pressured
> when using
> > their mobile devices. This is *particularly* true when entering text
> > (say, a message to someone else) than when browsing for content.
> >
> > So, when entering text, charging by packet may work out
> cheaper, but when
> > browsing content, charing by minute may be cheaper.
> >
> > zimran
> >
> > zimran@creativegood.com
> > 212.736.2075
> >
> > Check out our new wireless whitepaper! Download it for free at:
> > http://www.creativegood.com/wireless
> >
> > [ Did you check the archives?   http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
>
>
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