Allen, your assumption is that prices won't change. Competition will reduce prices.
If you use the basic price per minute as your starting point, rather than the over the top extra minutes charges, you will get to a more realistic charge for right NOW.
But you need to go a bit further into the future to predict data usage. Bit prices are dropping quickly. In 2 or 3 years, when data bits are selling by the trillion, you'll find the $7.20 per minute figure you got will bear little resemblance to reality.
Since most marginal minutes are currently about 10c a minute, you should think more like $2 a minute than $7.20 a minute. That's NOW.
Give it a year or two. $1 a minute would be tops and I guess more like 30c a minute, or free in off-peak or quiet times. Maybe the good old dynamic pricing model will start to show up where prices vary instantaneously and people hit SEND according to the price on their screen.
Motorola patented such a scheme back in 1993.
<Just some simple HDR arithmetic, for those so interested. Assume a maximum channel rate of 2.4Mbps, which even Qualcomm acknowledges is more theoretical than real. This 2.4Mbps occurs in an IS-95 size channel, 1.25MHz. A typical IS-95 channel can support up to 24 users, and I've heard rumors that there's an effort to bring that to 48. 2.4Mbps divided by 24 users equals 100kbps per user, at the theoretical maximum.
My service with Sprint charges US$0.30 per minute for minutes over my plan's maximum. That works out to $7.20 per minute for Sprint when the entire channel is active.
>
Maurice |
