Tom, thanks for having a think about it. The electronic gizzards is the easy part. Don't worry about the cost. Even the software would be relatively trivial [a groan goes up from the software crowd!]. Don't forget too, the cost would be spread over about half the cdmaOne subscribers, who choose the "CURRENT PRICE IS ..." plan.
That is the miracle of chips and software. Once designed, you just duplicate it at nearly no marginal cost like a virulent flu virus but with benefits instead of pain. The Bill Gates principle of making billions of $$$$$$. Handsets are rapidly becoming powerful little computers. Basestations can handle such minimal software easily enough. To be really clever would take more extensive software and links to long distance and remote telecom network "subscriber auction" algorithms, but to get 90% of the answer wouldn't take too much effort.
Yes, Ira's load sharing comments are true, but they do just spread the problem over a greater area rather than an individual cell. They don't make the problem go away altogether. What is important is the precision of pricing and maximising of utilisation. Yes, each day would be much the same as others, but you would get variation so that with fixed pricing, even if done in one hour long segments, there would always have to be unused capacity at peak times, which are the most profitable times to provide service, to avoid the dreaded "NO SERVICE AVAILABLE" sign.
Yes, we have Kmart here! Blue lights, red lights, green lights. They are all flashing these days. Marketers increasingly are being more precise about consumers needs.
What on earth are huskers? Nasdaq symbol please....Crop Preparation in biotechs??
Mqurice
[$US100 from me for the first "showstopper" objection to subscriber auction price plans for 50% of a network's subscribers. Valid objections can't include ones with obvious solutions - such as the objection that subscribers would not trust network operators to not put the price up artificially - that isn't a valid objection as subscribers would simply bail out of that system or switch to the cheaper fixed plan if they tried it. I get to be the judge of valid objections. Judge's decision is as final as a trade dress infringement judgement against Motorola]. |
