re: Verizon's 3G billing model
The story going around in the U.S. is that Verizon's billing infrastructure
isn't well-prepared for packet-based billing. Since Verizon is essentially
a conglomeration of various services across the U.S., their current billing
system is essentially one big hack job that unifies the proprietary billing
systems of all of the formerly independent carriers.
As you've already heard, Cingular GPRS (with a very limited release) and
VoiceStream GPRS (quietly operating their nationwide network) are using a
packet-based model. Once Sprint launches their G3 service, it's broadly
expected that they will as well.
Verizon will presumably offer a packet-based billing model as soon as they
can rework their overcomplicated billing system.
Also worth mentioning, Verizon has launched 1XRTT handset service as well,
using the same WAP gateway as their 2.5G service. So far, I've seen
handsets by LG and Kyocera, with high-quality ringtone capability.
At least 1XRTT is available in California. Despite three carriers launching
GPRS networks, none of them are commercial here. :(
Howard
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh White [mailto:josh@blackbrick.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 11:01 AM
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: american 1XRTT network goes live, covers 53m
users
> This doesn't look anything like i-mode because it's, well, not i-mode. :-)
That's right, Curt. It's relevant only because there is a packet-based
technology in place for 53m US customers.
> This is their 3G data service, and would correspond to the FOMA
[...]
> It's not designed at all for use by phones, but rather by computers,
That's correct (hence not very similar to FOMA, sadly).
> so it's no surprise that it's connection based
It is surprising that they're billing per minute. Verizon's aimed this at
enterprises, but they're using 1G consumer-style per-minute billing. This
isn't competitive with other (GPRS) wireless data networks are billing
per-packet, as my friend Rolf recently pointed out. However, with their
much
larger coverage, they may get customers who will swallow this billing model
simply because it's the only high-speed wireless network they can find.
As a consumer app developer, I'm not too concerned about their billing for
this service. I'm just glad the US's largest carrier has fast, packet-based
data coverage on 20% of their network, and looking forward to further
announcements, such as versatile billing (per-packet, billing-on-behalf,
etc),
more coverage, and over-the-air app downloads.
-Josh
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Received on Thu Jan 31 03:41:11 2002