BARCELONA, Spain – While marketing hype around acronyms, levels of “G” and the sexy devices that run over those networks are seen as the main drivers in the mobile broadband world, at the end of the day it’s how innovative carriers can be in pricing those services that will decide the success or failure of the market, according to Thomas Wehmeier, principal analyst for telco strategy and industry research at Informa Telecoms & Media, during an interview with RCR Wireless News at the Mobile World Congress event.
Wehmeier noted that carriers needed to get more creative in pricing their mobile data offerings not only to attract users that might not want or need to purchase monthly access, but to also maximize the revenue potential of those billion-dollar networks.
These more diverse offerings could also help carriers tap into the revenue stream being generated over-the-top player like Skype and Facebook that have been able to capture users to offerings similar to what carriers provide.
“Any person at an operator that stands up and says ‘I have too much traffic on my network’ should have their job taken away,” Wehmeier said, adding that this is what carriers should be striving for. They should in turn be trying to tap into this extraordinary demand to produce a robust business model. “You hear lots of rhetoric around this from vendors and how it’s a threat to carriers, but in reality it’s an opportunity.”
That creativity also needs to expand into tiered service levels, Wehmeier explained, citing the need to provide more than just a loyalty offering to customers. He noted that carriers could look at a tiered offering that provided those willing to spend extra to have access to not only higher-speed services, but also to more robust customer service and other premium offerings.
Wehmeier cited Verizon Wireless’ “turbo boost” proposal that will allow customers to temporarily increase their network speeds for a fee. The ability is expected to be available later this year.
Other operators have begun to offer such speed-based pricing models, including Clearwire for its WiMAX-branded Clear offering and more recently Leap Wireless for its LTE service.
Wehmeier acknowledged that this could be a difficult proposition to market in some areas as mobile services have become almost an expected “right” of consumers and that to then segregate that right based on ability or willingness to pay could draw backlash from consumers and even regulators.
a href= https://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20110113/carriers/metropcs-targeted-as-blocking-open-internet-access/ target=_blank>MetroPCS sort of ran into this problem last year when it introduced a tiered download amount for its own branded content as opposed to content downloaded through third-party vendors.
The move to LTE services could be a step in the right direction for carriers being able to offer such customized pricing plans as the analytic capabilities embedded in the technology allows carriers to track customer usage models at a level not available through previous generations of technology. Though, to take advantage of this billing systems need to provide a simplified interface so all areas of a carrier’s operations can scrape actionable information from the system, Wehmeier explained.
“Currently portals into [deep packet inspection] are too complex for most in the industry to use, Wehmeier noted. “This creates a bottleneck in the company, as only one person can take advantage of the information. This is left over from the siloed mentality carriers have operator under. There has to be information sharing within the operators. It’s really these sorts of things and not just spectrum shortages that are hindering operators in the data age.”
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