*** "Wacky Wireless", "Cat's Eyes" Price Displays and "CURRENT PRICE IS..." price plans *** Same old story...
Lance, >>Even Leap won't compete with a company which sells CDMA Wacky Wireless. That's because when Leap is overloaded, people won't be able to get through, so what will Leap do about that? Leap will leave people without phone service or cut them off if the cell they are in suffocates and shrinks and the subscriber is at the periphery of it. People closer to the base station will retain service and those on the periphery will lose it. <<
... is totally true. Yes, it's true that Leap can accept more noise in the system, reduce the bit rate and voice quality and thereby increase the number of subscribers, but at some stage, if demand is too much, they would have to cut supply to some users.
Wacky Wireless would avoid that situation and avoid any significant deterioration in voice quality too, by having people voluntarily avoiding making calls at busy times. People would avoid making calls because the current price would be showing as $ $ per minute on their screen, before they press SEND. Many would choose NOT to press SEND, knowing they could wait 20 minutes and get much cheaper rates. Therefore, the system wouldn't get overloaded and quality wouldn't deteriorate.
CDMA cells are largest when there is nobody using the base station. As they become loaded, the radius of the cell decreases and as it gets noisier and noisier, with handsets turning themselves onto full blast to get their signal to the base station, the cell diameter shrinks more. So a handset which at a very lightly-loaded time, can just make contact from a long way away when its power is turned right up, would lose contact or fail to make contact when many handsets which are much closer are filling the base station. The base station couldn't do anything about it because circuits would be full or noise would be intense and many closer handsets would be operating on full power already, sending more distant handsets into Gaussian white-noise nothingness. That's my understanding anyway and in the absence of Clark, Walt, Engineer etc, nobody is here to disagree!
For consistent, good quality service, it's important to maintain high bit rates [as you say, 13kbps is the ideal - the half-rate CDMA systems weren't so popular] and a reasonable cell-site diameter to maintain a steady coverage area. There is some flexibility in that, but quality of service and availability are paramount.
Dumping callers, cutting them off, charging too much money or reducing voice quality are NOT the way to provide what subscribers want. There is no other way than a Wacky Wireless price system, to achieve a high-quality, low-cost system with a fairly stable coverage area.
Which is NOT to say that everyone needs to be on that pricing system. There would just need to be enough subscribers on it to ensure it works properly. Some algorithm statisticians would be needed to set up the pricing systems and plans so that the system works to everyone's satisfaction.
Some people could pay a fixed, flat-rate price per month for eat all they like anytime. [These are insecure people who buy life insurance, house, car, earnings, tooth, clothing and other insurance and sit in traffic jams each day].
Some a fixed bucket of minutes per month, with no extra minutes or extra minutes at some set price. [These are budget conscious people who need each detail in their life fixed - they buy their cemetery plot years in advance].
Others would choose a fixed price per minute, anytime. [They don't like to think, don't like to plan, don't like to adjust and would rather pay a premium to just do what they like, when they like, without thought].
Others would choose a peak/off peak price plan. [Cost-conscious and look for savings, but need to feel safe and in-the-crowd].
The winners with the cheapest monthly bills would be those Wacky Wireless plan users who would get free minutes whenever the system was operating at less than 80% capacity, then they would pay an increasingly steep price until at 98% capacity they would defer calls when they saw $10 a minute, or $20 a minute or whatever it takes to keep the system with a bit of space available. [These are the wild, pork-belly commodity traders, techstock investors and optimists, unafraid of life, who like the smart way of doing stuff and can handle the fast lane on the freeway, who get there first and cheapest].
Nobody would be cut off. Everyone could connect any time they like. Profits would be maximized. The system would run at high capacity 24/7. Battery life would be good. Coverage would be consistent [the cell site not 'breathing' or 'suffocating' more than a small amount]. Subscribers would be happy and boasting about their always available, high quality service. Shareholders would be boasting about their obscene profits.
As airlines know, it's the last few % of bums on seats where the big money is made. The same thing applies to cellphone systems. Running at 25% capacity most of the time is pitiful.
Wacky Wireless is the only solution. There is NO other way of doing it with such good results. Leap Wireless will lose as soon as a competitor shows up in their neighbourhood with Wacky Wireless. That is one reason why I dumped all my Leap at $92.
USSR Central Planner types [and Globalstar marketers] dislike this idea because they believe everyone and everything needs to be controlled. It seems inherently out of control to have subscribers deciding things. Centralists and hierarchy power-seekers don't like freedom of choice. But alogorithm merchants would be able to grasp the idea and see that both the system operator and subscribers do VERY well from this.
Mqurice
PS: "Cat's Eyes" derives from engineer pointing out that packets of data [including voice] have to go through a pipe the same as rats through a drain = single file. There can't be some fast and some slow or the whole thing would sieze up with blockage. Maximum flow rate of data is one after the other. There is no 'fast lane'. So, I suggested having a cat sitting on the handset screen, with $ $ eyes. When sleeping, eyes closed, the data and voice could travel for free and people would press SEND any time. As the base station became loaded, the cat would wake and start catching rats and charging them some cents per minute. As it became busier still, the cat would have $$ signs in its eyes and only the most desperate rats would hit SEND to zoom through the drain.
It's a way of controlling demand and avoiding system over-load. |
