PCS, my argument to Globalstar was that minutes should be free until the system was loaded. If not free then at least really cheap. But they argued that they had a deal with Primeco that nobody could get a better deal than Primeco. It was something like 30c per minute [as I recall] and they wanted to charge me 50c a minute. Crazy stupid high pricing.
I might have thought about 10c a minute.
What this means <Paying for the gateways was understandable, though unnecessary. I was happy to buy a gateway for NZ and buy thousands of handsets too. But the gateways, aka Exit 1, should have been owned and built by Globalstar. > is that I would have been happy to buy a gateway, not that it should have been free to me as Exit 27 owner. Of course if Globalstar paid for the gateway, they would own it and be the operator which is what I thought was the best way to do it. Putting "service" providers get between them and the customer never seemed a good idea - the importance of "local knowledge" and "customer contact" were vastly over-rated as Vodafone and others soon taught them.
The concept that they could not get and few have been able to understand, and why I am not an owner of GSAT, is that there are things called:
Consumer surplus
Price elasticity
Supply and demand
Auctions as the best way of determining value
Time value of money
Depreciation
Word of mouth advertising
Free publicity
Those things define what the price of megabytes and devices should be at different times and in different places for different people.
The underlying problem is that MBA people, and others, are imbued with the mindset of charging big heaps to maximize profits, and fear of "price destruction". It is very uncool to sell on price. Any sales training course goes Hell for leather to educate people that price is not the most important reason people buy.
Unfortunately, ideologues being as they are, once they are inculcated with their cult ideology, they are unable to think of a better way when reality comes calling. Other such cults are religious and more recently environmental. Rather than see the error of their ways, they prefer to go down with the ship or, as per Godwin's Law, in Adolf's case, die in the bunker taking all with them.
It's appealing to the social climbing nature of humans to want to charge lots and deal with important people - which means in this case people with money to spend. Being a carnival barker or stack it high and sell it cheap low rent merchant is considered totally uncool and nobody would be seen dead doing that. But note that Wal-Mart, which is not noted for high prices, has become one of the larger companies in the USA. Note that Ikea does okay. We the Plebs of the world are often overlooked, until the revolution comes and the Wal-Mart revolution sent many high-priced merchants to the wall.
Mqurice |
