Comment: Complexing the customer (FOMA)
By Robert Clark
Tuesday, 4 September 2001
It’s not a brave prediction, but telecomasia.net will make it anyway: the
launch of the world’s first commercial 3G service on October 1 will be a
non-event.
That’s not just because it’s four months later than originally announced,
or because the trial has been plagued by technology glitches, or even
because there will be no inter-operability with PDC handsets for nearly a
year.
No, it’s because this is clearly a classic technology-driven launch of a
product, completely divorced from the needs of the consumers. It takes
telecomasia.net back a decade to the launch of ISDN.
Back then telcos were eager to promulgate this sexy, all-digital
technology, just as they are with 3G today, yet no-one was very clear what
problem it was going to solve. Corporates who wanted a digital data line
were already leasing a digital data line. Sure, it would it be conceptually
simpler to run everything down the same pipe as digital bits, but that
means you need to replace your existing PBX with an all-digital one.
They might have been encouraged to do that with some an attractive price
offer or two but telcos, being telcos, spent so much on the ISDN rollout
that it would injure their pride to sell the service cheaply.
A look at the six-page FOMA price list shows FOMA’s marketers inhabit the
same psychological territory.
The basic charge, known as FOMA plan 39, is ¥3,900 ($32.85), with ¥700
in bundled free calls and a special ¥1,000 bundled free call offer until
March. The high end plan, FOMA 150, has a ¥15,000 ($126.30) monthly
fee and ¥11,600 in bundled free calls.
On top of the basic charges are the eye-glazingly detailed call fees. These
differ for voice and for 64k mode, they differ geographically, on the basis
of whether you are calling within or without a single area, and they differ
depending on whether a customer is calling a FOMA, PDC or PHS phone,
or to a non-DoCoMo or landline phone.
That’s for outbound alone. Inbound is a different proposition altogether,
as are calls from NTT phones to FOMA and as are the packet service
charges. SMS and value-added services are extra.
Now, Japanese operators are not unique in having complex tariffing
structures. Indeed, it is a well-practised tactic by incumbents to make their
prices as difficult to understand as possible, to deter any kind of
comparison shopping with rivals.
But this kind of complexity would deter the most determined gadget
freak. It also demonstrates that DoCoMo is more interested in rolling out
networks according to its own arbitrary timetable than delivering services
customers crave.
Good luck, DoCoMo and to all of FOMA’s brave customers.
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