John Linton This caught my eye yesterday:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575562091702677062.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews
as we were 'completing the re-setting of the Exetel wireless broadband plans. Having previously commented on the gyrations in the US marketplaces by AT&T and Verizon in first offering 'unllimited' mobile device downloads for $US30.00 a month and then reporting the average download usage as much less than 400 mbytes per month for telephone handsets.Now Verizon comes up with $US15.00 a month for 150 mbytes.....makes you wonder who is counting the numbers and just what they are seeing....or whether successive reporting is reporting on different bases which is not being made clear in the reporting.
We agreed on and then added four new wireless broadband plans to our revised offerings yesterday:
1 gbyte for $15.00 pm
2 gbytes for $22.00 pm
3 gbytes for $30.00 pm
5 gbytes for $45.00 pm
All of the plans were based on premium provisioning with premium inclusions and we also slightly reduced the price of wireless modems though our assumption is that a very high proportion of people who buy from us will already have a wireless modem or will source one elsewhere. Together with the payu plan we had already put in place these options provide a real wireless service at very low pricing without any of the smoke and mirrors that is far too common with other companies offerings. Whether there is still a place for 'honesty' in product presentation in this part of the residential marketplace remains pretty doubtful.
We discussed 'matching' the just reduced Telstra higher download 7/12 gbyte plans (or their Optus equivalents) but we can't do that without losing money. This is because of our 'foolish' decision to continue to provision the wireless broadband service at full capacity to meet the peak demands of all customers at all times rather than to only aim to provision at 60% of that required capacity. Perhaps we are being foolish in actually trying to provide the performance level a residential customer assumes they are going to get but it just seems plain dishonest to me to do anything else....and I have never considered myself to be more morally 'upright' than my 'neighbour'.
What we have been able to come up with now, in terms of pricing, doesn't begin to address the path started down by Optus of course - and what is already available in the USA from AT&T and Verizon - unlimited data downloads at very low prices in the US ($US30.00) and unaffordable prices from Optus ($A90.00) at the moment but prices that are certain to fall now that the concept has been established. It is an interesting idea - to have daily allowances that can be changed on a day by day basis....and when the price per day equates to a realistic price per month for more and more potential users then it could be a 'seismic' change in service pricing. It has some very obvious problems though - not least the number of billing disputes it could generate if Optus' residential billing systems are as woeful as their wholesale billing 'systems'.
So we will have one more look at offering higher than 5 gbyte wireless broadband plans later this morning and then move on to something else (like dealing with TPG's new desperation in selling Telstra's ADSL1 and ADSL2 services at new low prices) until the next iteration in the Telstra vs Optus wireless wars. Hopefully we will see some differences over the coming few weeks in terms of 'take up' of the new plans but I will not be holding my breath.
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