Rather an odd story in Friday’s London Evening Standard. Hard on the heels of 3’s announcement on pricing for its X-Series, Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone “predicts” that flat rate monthly pricing would be the norm “within a matter of years”.
To someone who doesn’t work for an operator, this is a little puzzling. I mean, if it’s truly inevitable, as Mr Sarin suggests, why not just do it? What purpose is there to delaying the inevitable and particularly when any analyst and pundit you speak to agrees that it’s holding back the usage of the mobile web.
Paul Goode at M:Metrics was doing a speaking slot at the Visiongain Mobile Advertising Conference last week, which I was also presenting at. He told a story of a colleague who got a new phone and was merrily putting it through its paces for his colleagues at work. He streamed a couple of videos and surfed the net generally, only to find a few weeks later that his lunchtime playing had resulted in a £41 ($81) charge from his friendly, cuddly operator.
He was also overheard complaining later about the charges, saying that he didn’t even actually download the videos and had nothing to show for his money - and that “anyway, it wasn’t even porn!”. I wonder if it had been porn, if he’d have felt any happier?
Bur seriously, this was a chance to create a young, passionate advocate for the mobile web and what happened? The operator created someone who’s going to go round warning people NOT to use it as they’ll be shafted with a hefty and unexpected bill.
At the Library House’s MediaTech (I’ll be writing more about my little speaking tour in due course) I also had a chance to play with one of 3’s X-Series phones and I’m pleased to say that the product is as stunning as the price. Really fast, nice UI - the future of mobility has arrived at last on a phone.
Like many, I’ve gone in for a fair amount of criticism of 3 over the years, never gratuitously, I hope, but trying to be constructive in my comments. But they’ve done themselves proud with this.
I only hope that the other operators start to follow suit and stop incentivising their customers not to use their data products. Let’s hope that 2007 will the the year that the walls come tumbling down, as well as fixed data plans being offered as standard. Then we’ll see the mobile web really start to rock.
[…] Link: Vodafone Chief Predicts Flat Rate Pricing at MobHappy Rather an odd story in Friday’s London Evening Standard. Hard on the heels of 3’s announcement on pricing for its X-Series, Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone “predicts” that flat rate monthly pricing would be the norm “within a matter of years”. […]
Suspect the reason they are not going flat rate is that the operators are maximising their proifts at the early market stage - this is typical of any business that has semi-monopoly/significant market power - they’ll sequeeze massive profits from the cash rich 25-50 year old ABC1’s (using their company phones mostly I’d guess) until that model cracks and/or one or more competitor breaks from the pack and offers flat rate. Well this process has begun with Tmobile and 3 breaking away but these ‘offers’ are anything but unlimited with restrictions on VOIP and Instant Messaging. So the ops will squeeze consumers for maximum profit for as long as they can - but when someone actually offers a truly unlimited mobile tarriff then the game changes - that’s when the rush to offer competing offers will begin. As a mobile advertising agency we can’t wait…but we know when looking at UK internet pricing history i.e: Prestel (bloody expensive) > compuserve (premium) >aol (better) >’free broadband’(kinda free) that getting to Truly-Free took ten years. And several hundred thousand carphonewarehouse consumers would argue that their free broadband isn’t really free at all when taking into account the calls to complain about the quality of service!
Chris
[…] Link: Vodafone Chief Predicts Flat Rate Pricing at MobHappy Rather an odd story in Friday’s London Evening Standard. Hard on the heels of 3’s announcement on pricing for its X-Series, Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone “predicts” that flat rate monthly pricing would be the norm “within a matter of years”. […]