Re: An Attempt at Economically Rational Pricing: Time Warner Trial

[Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike () swm pp se>]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> Right.  And mobile phones, which you admit are more difficult to 
> understand and manage, have clearly been a disastrous failure.  By your 
> analogy, we should expect this to be a slightly less disastrous failure. 
> (Would that Time Warner were so lucky. :)

No, it's easier to understand that by making a call where you're 
physically abroad you're charged more. Otoh "unlimited wireless" plans are 
common here and now people are discovering that if you're close to the 
border of another country you're all of a sudden roaming and instead of 
free wireless broadband, you're paying several dollars per megabyte 
transferred (without you noticing it). This is not what people expect.

This is why some people really really want "tokens" or prepaid and then 
have their account severely limited or shut off when their account is 
"empty", instead of being charged per-usage without upper limit.

If the cheap flatrate broadband were to go away and be replaced by a 
metered one, we as an industry need to figure out how to do billing in a 
customer-friendly manner. We do not have much experience with this in many 
markets.

--
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike () swm pp se