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traditional web-enabled handset, mobile PCs chew through some 450 times that data (according to Peter Misek at Canaccord Adams).
Galen Gruman at Infoworld reported this month that it's these laptops and netbooks that are really fueling the most alarming aspects of the bandwidth explosion, and quotes an ABI Research study that by 2014, all of the smartphone use combined will only make up less than ten percent of the projected 9.7 exabytes (9.7 million terabytes) of mobile data traffic. As carriers are actively marketing and subsidizing netbooks, they're encouraging this massive data traffic while still being in a position to be easily overwhelmed by such traffic.
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What better opportunity to change those patterns than to introduce a new paradigm for data charging alongside 4G rollouts? |
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for the vast majority of the unreasonable bandwidth consumption, then it's obvious that tiered pricing is a simple necessity. Furthermore, if it's true that 4G speeds are higher, and that the users who tend to consume the highest rates of bandwidth will be among the earliest adopters of this speedier 4G technology.
Install a bandwidth cap or tiered pricing early-on, and it will simply be, as they say, the cost of doing business. It's easier, after all, to
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However, new and different traffic may be a path to new and different charging models. In fact, it may be the 4G movement that helps carriers exit the more-for-less trap.
Now, what "4G" means exactly is the subject of some interpretation (see Ed Finegold's column on the topic in this issue). However, the shift to a new category of access may provide cover for a different charging scheme. Because, frankly, a change is needed.
PCWorld reported in December that the CEO of AT&T's Mobility and Consumer Markets, Ralph de la Vega, had strongly hinted that some sort of usage-based pricing was a possibility for that provider, saying "We have to get to those [high usage] customers and get them to recognize they have to change their patterns, or there are things we will do to change those patterns."
And what better opportunity to change those patterns than to introduce a new paradigm for data charging alongside 4G rollouts? If it's true that the most intense bandwidth hogs (and we could be talking about users or devices, here) are responsible
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introduce new pricing in a somewhat new environment than to change pricing structures midstream.
This is all theoretical, of course. Those who plan to complain will still do so. Ad infinitum.
However, the idea that 4G may bring with it new pricing models is certainly reasonable when you consider that the pricing models never should have spiraled so far out of control in the first place.
In any event, OSS and BSS, as always, have a pivotal role to play. Network visibility is key to understanding where the heaviest bandwidth use is taking place. Flexible charging, rating, and billing models ensure that, once policy is decided, CSPs have the tools they need to collect the proper charges. In short, the tools are present. What's lacking is the decision to put heavier bandwidth controls in place in a way that they haven't been for many providers to date.
That's the only way to end the trap of providing more for less.
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