Marc Printz wrote:
> I'm reading and hearing over and over again that telcos will
> be moving away from charging for voice calls and that data in
> the mobile space will be generating the bucks/euros/yens. I
> still can't see how this will ever work and why telcos should
> give away a service for free that is still and will ever be
> the main interest/value for people carrying keitai. Please
> convince me! I'm sure its possible. The other issue is that
> voice calls will then be usable for free low-bandwidth data,
> too (similar to covert channel), so there'll be interesting
> new business models exploiting this?
I'm not going to try to convice you. Instead, I'm going to
agree with your pesimistic side.
This reminds me of the "in the future long distance calls will
be free" arguments. Armchair analysts should realize, when
extrapolating current growth curves and trends to the future,
the line sometimes takes a nasty turn and goes linear or even
logrithmic.
Fact of the matter is that there is still quite a bit of money
to be made from the landline sector. It is, by far, less risky
and more predictable (espically in Japan where even a single phone
line costs ~US$500 to acquire).
Further more, due to the fact that NTT lives in caller-pays land,
the branch and central exchanges are under provisioned for anything
but caller-pays. Given a hypothetical that the change to flat
rate had to be made tomorrow, the majority of phone users would
get fast busies.... and probably for a very long time after such
a hypothetical switch, due to the fact that flat rate would
completely smash the revenue flow tha that would be required to
provision for flat rate (think chicken and egg problem).
Also keep in mind that caller-pays land lines protect cellular
revenue by making the choice to carry and use a mobile easier to
make. I've also got a feeling that wireline carries more traffic
that wireless ever could hope to (and to understand this, you need
to divorce the ideas of capacity and cost as going hand in hand).
The manner in which wireless data has come to fruition in Japan
should spell out very clearly how telcos think. "covert channel"?
...like sending time senstive packets through the docomo gateways?
I don't think so.
Finally, in the land of the great telco experiment(s) (the USA),
predictions of free long distance have yet to come true. In
fact, if you've watched the trends over the last 10 years, it
has become obvious the regonal and long distance carriers have
actually increased revenues by dramatically increasing the
number of area codes (even though population growth does not
necessarily dictate the contraction of an area code). If you
wanted to make general statements about land line service, you
*might* be able to say Japan is becomming more like the US and
the US is becomming more like Japan, but even that would be going
a bit far.
If you're going to point me at the various freetel/dialpad/etc.
internet based phone services, I will point out every last one
of these was a advertizing/marketing exercise and all have
reverted to a pay model upon obtaining a sustanable customer
base (minus attrition from the switch to a pay model). This would
be the most obvious way method by which data would bring about
free/low cost voice... and it's not going to happen... at least
not in Japan. The other side to your propsition (that high
bandwidth, low latency, always on wireless connections will
produce the opportunity for free voice service) is like arguing
that there exists a viable market niche for telegraph serivce.
(and to a degree, you might be right, because anyone willing to
invest a couple hundred dollars and a few hours of time can send
free wireless telegraph messages! unfortunatly, the number of
people to whom the message can be sent represents about .001%
of the general phone using population).
In the mean time, if someone wants to make a free voice call, I'd
suggest that they, stop yacking on their keitai, pull over to the
side of the road and use that emergency telephone box.
[ Need archives? How to unsubscribe? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Wed Aug 8 12:25:05 2001