Since per-packet pricing is one of the factors that is often mentioned
as being part of i-mode's success,
I thought it would be interesting to see how recent U.S. pricing compares to
Docomo's per-packet pricing.
I am also interested in hearing from anyone who knows the pricing
from other locales, such as South Korea, Hong Kong, & Europe, or even
the other Japanese carriers besides Docomo.
Two GSM based carriers in the U.S. have upgraded (partially) to GPRS service,
which allows higher data rates and packet-based billing.
carrier quantity price price/KB over quota notes
------- -------- ----- -------- ---------- -----
VoiceStream 1 MB $2.99/mo $.0029 $10/MB incl. 300 text msgs
Cingular .5 MB $14.99/mo $.029 $.07/KB incl. 100 text msgs/emails
Docomo ? ? $.0185 (*) ? ?
(*) assumes .3 yen / 128 bytes and 1 US$ = 130 yen
What is a bit shocking is that Cingular is charging more than Docomo!
pretty gutsy considering the dearth of available content when compared to i-mode.
Verizon's "3-G" service seems to only allow per-minute billing so i didn't
include it here.
-rolf
Received on Wed Jan 30 11:21:48 2002