wraggster
June 11th, 2010, 21:45
I've been thinking about Andrew Bud a lot this week. It's not a romantic thing. And it's not to do with envy of his lustrous hair (although God knows what pain that causes me). No, this is all about something far more exciting: data charges.
Yeah, baby.
Now, anyone who's been to any kind of mobile content conference in the last few years will know that towards the end of the event, Andrew Bud (exec chair of mBlox and chair of the MEF) will ask this question:
"You guys have been banging on about the wonderful future for music streaming/liveTV/online gaming (delete as appropriate), but no one has mentioned the effect this will have on the network – and who's going to pay for all that bandwidth."
You can set your watch by it.
And he's bloody right!
Yet still the operators went on with their unlimited data plans, watching as their networks slowed to a crawl while data revenues became as squeezed and commoditised as voice and text were before them.
Well, this week they woke up.
First AT&T and then O2UK announced plans for a more transparent data pricing model tied to usage.
Of course, O2 could have said 'we're in a right pickle – never dreamed that this whole mobile web thing would actually take off'.
But it didn't. Instead, it dressed this up as a tremendous boon for customers claiming that, based on current usage patterns, 97 per cent of them would not need to buy additional data allowances, as the lowest bundle (500MB) provides at least 2.5 times the average current use.
I'm sure this is true. Needless to say, though, not everyone agreed. There's been some carping from experts on the blogs about inconsistencies in the pricing. Probably true too.
What's been less commented upon is whether this can make any difference to congestion, which is the core problem here.
O2 may succeed in reining in the heaviest users, but as telco analyst Dean Bubley pointed out to me today, the real issue is not the overall volume of data but where and when it's consumed.
There's a huge difference between thousands of people streaming live TV in various meadows across the country at 4am and thousands browsing simple web pages in central London at 4pm.
Although he acknowledged that the new pricing could bring in extra cash to make some short term improvements to the network, the serious changes will take much longer. In the meantime, this is a 'sledgehammer to crack a nut'.
Of course, another route through which operators can monetise data is to get suppliers to buy it 'wholesale'. This is the 'sender-pays' model so beloved of Mr Bud.
As I understand it, such conversations have taken place, but not everyone is on board. I'm told YouTube, for example, laughed at the idea of paying for the bandwidth its mobile users consumer, but proposed sharing some ad revenue back to the operators.
Now, that is fascinating.
On the one hand, there could be huge future revenues in it. Very tempting.
On the other? Well, there's two words for it.
Dumb and pipe.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/37456/A-moment-of-silence-for-flat-rate-data
Yeah, baby.
Now, anyone who's been to any kind of mobile content conference in the last few years will know that towards the end of the event, Andrew Bud (exec chair of mBlox and chair of the MEF) will ask this question:
"You guys have been banging on about the wonderful future for music streaming/liveTV/online gaming (delete as appropriate), but no one has mentioned the effect this will have on the network – and who's going to pay for all that bandwidth."
You can set your watch by it.
And he's bloody right!
Yet still the operators went on with their unlimited data plans, watching as their networks slowed to a crawl while data revenues became as squeezed and commoditised as voice and text were before them.
Well, this week they woke up.
First AT&T and then O2UK announced plans for a more transparent data pricing model tied to usage.
Of course, O2 could have said 'we're in a right pickle – never dreamed that this whole mobile web thing would actually take off'.
But it didn't. Instead, it dressed this up as a tremendous boon for customers claiming that, based on current usage patterns, 97 per cent of them would not need to buy additional data allowances, as the lowest bundle (500MB) provides at least 2.5 times the average current use.
I'm sure this is true. Needless to say, though, not everyone agreed. There's been some carping from experts on the blogs about inconsistencies in the pricing. Probably true too.
What's been less commented upon is whether this can make any difference to congestion, which is the core problem here.
O2 may succeed in reining in the heaviest users, but as telco analyst Dean Bubley pointed out to me today, the real issue is not the overall volume of data but where and when it's consumed.
There's a huge difference between thousands of people streaming live TV in various meadows across the country at 4am and thousands browsing simple web pages in central London at 4pm.
Although he acknowledged that the new pricing could bring in extra cash to make some short term improvements to the network, the serious changes will take much longer. In the meantime, this is a 'sledgehammer to crack a nut'.
Of course, another route through which operators can monetise data is to get suppliers to buy it 'wholesale'. This is the 'sender-pays' model so beloved of Mr Bud.
As I understand it, such conversations have taken place, but not everyone is on board. I'm told YouTube, for example, laughed at the idea of paying for the bandwidth its mobile users consumer, but proposed sharing some ad revenue back to the operators.
Now, that is fascinating.
On the one hand, there could be huge future revenues in it. Very tempting.
On the other? Well, there's two words for it.
Dumb and pipe.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/37456/A-moment-of-silence-for-flat-rate-data