Could they make a profit if everyone used 10,000 MOU per month?? No! Of course not!
For the flat rate users system, the only thing matters is the number of sign up for the service, not the MOU because as I have repeated several times, your system gonna be sitting there and running at full speed anyway. It doesn't rest one bit even when there's no user on it.
So the key thing is how many users you can sign up. And in the business of wireless, users are generally expecting instable results such as quality of sounds and speed of data. That's why you limit the user expectation, making sure that he is expecting the worst yet still willing to go. On the other hand you sort of roll your dice that not all people loging on at the same time, that's a statistical thing in nature. As a result you plan out your network coverage and capacity.
How many people download large MP3 files over dial-up 50kbs vs. over 500kbs?
You know data, unlike voice, is quite latency tolerant. Both the application itself and user experience. I don't think most of the people will start cursing if their download slowing down for the moment, and most of the people will just say I will come back later.
I have download tons of movies using MMS, what I did was start the downloading before I went to bed and next morning it may not even finished. Keep in mind in the world of packet data there are tons of places are the bottleneck. Even though I have a cable connection can reach 4Mbps at times, the download server might only give me 40-50 kbps.
The spirit of the story is that you are quite flexible when you are using data. Of course everything has its limit, so is your patience, so the key is too keep the customers in the door while delivering something that is bit better than their expectation. And occasionally better service won't hurt too. |
