> When you ask "when will carriers add things that benefit consumers ?"
> it is quite clear that no company likes to destroy value. People are
> happy now with
> the prices, why bother if no competitive solution arises ? It is the
> same story with
> the outrageous SMS prices in Europe. Why not proper e-mail or lower
> prices?
I haven't checked the European market at large but at least the local
GSM carriers are nowadays offering subscriptions that include a large
number of SMS messages in the basic price, e.g. 8.10 e/month that
includes 900 SMS's.
"Proper e-mail" is just a matter of time -- or education, the problem
is that carrier has very little value to offer there and thus very
little revenue opportunity. Many/most phones offer standard Internet
e-mail client support and there are number of options to get an e-mail
account on the network. Add GPRS and you've got a proper e-mail and
the carrier will get peanuts compared to their old-age SMS fees.
Back in the old time there were e-mail services that had per message
charges and Internet connections were charged by the minute.
Eventually everything merged into fixed price, always available
broadband connections. There's a clear analog to the mobile world..
Petri
Received on Tue Dec 7 19:49:14 2004