Reply to O2’s Ronan Dunne About Their Proposed Limited iPhone Tariffs
(Posted here because O2 took to censoring comments from Ronan’s blog post)
(Which can be found here: http://j.mp/DataBlog )
Ronan, your position on data makes no sense at all. Here’s what’s actually going on:
O2 (and other cell carriers in the US and other places) are simply terrified of what happens when the larger bulk of their users starts to realise that they can use their smartphones for video, music and gaming. Right now that 0.1% you’re talking about is simply the early adopters, but they follow a wave.
It could be called “The Youtube effect” or somesuch, and you know that it’s coming. When you could be spending some of that million-a-day working on the next level of compression for your technology (like the ADSL people did), instead you seem to be throwing your hands up in the air and, like King Canute, thinking you can simply command the ocean to stop advancing.
Limited usage has one effect and one effect only: It stops people using data because they become afraid of accidental costs. I used to use broadband on Orange years ago before I got an iPhone, and that’s what it was like. Metered access is simply cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Does nobody remember Compuserve? Or AOL? Or how it was in the pay-per-cycle days of dialup internet? That is essentially what you are proposing here. You’re saying “let’s turn back the clock”.
As for me, this now makes me think to move to another network that has a clue about what my needs both are and *are likely to be* into the future. My guess is that none of the major networks will provide that (because, like any oligopoly, you all tend to move in lock-step with each other) which means instead that I’ll start looking for alternatives, such as WiMax (or equivalent) services that simply cut you out of the loop.
And what happens when I do that? I drop my O2 tariff to the most bare bones cellphone usage instead and take my data (and the bulk of the monthly bill I would have paid you) to someone else.
Congratulations, you’re now losing money.
The smarter thing to do, as the broadband industry discovered, is to tier charges by speed rather than usage. Nobody has a problem with that and nobody is afraid of hidden costs, and THAT encourages usage while at the same time keeping traffic manageable. That’s the business model that you should be chasing.
But to revert to charging for usage is to essentially throw your hands in the air and cry that it’s all just too hard and boo hoo for O2. Please. You’re supposed to be embracing the future, not running in terror of it.
BTOpenzone
Does anyone understand the rhyme or reason why some of their hotspots are iPhone accessible and some are not? It drives me nuts because it means my iPhone will often jump on a hotspot automatically only to be disconnected from the Internet (such as while listening to Last.FM)
Interpersonal Intellectual Orgasm
From (of all places) a horoscope mail I was sent. Can you think of a better description of the ideal relationship between game developers and players?
A reader named Emory proposes that we add a
new meme to the cultural lexicon: *interpersonal intellectual orgasm.* Here’s how he describes it: “It happens when your conversation with another person becomes so intense that nothing else matters except the dialog you’re creating together. The two of you are so in-tune, so intellectually bonded, that the sensation is almost like making love. For that time, it’s like that person is in you and you are in that person; you are one because you understand each other so completely.”
