Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So, I just returned from the LTE North America event in Dallas, and I have to say, that LTE stuff seems pretty keen. All this talk about high-speed wireless data services traveling across more efficient networks is enough to make any nerd’s pocket protector flutter.
While this move to a common standard for a wireless technology is probably a good thing, I will have to admit that I miss all of the digs and infighting that came along with the CDMA/TDMA/GSM/MMA/AMPS/UFC battles of yore. Having carriers or technology association representatives on stage and taking childish swipes at those using a different technology was a thing of beauty, made even more so if you understood anything at all about the acronyms they represented.
However, there is one thing that sort of stuck in my craw while attending the event, and it was something that a few speakers noted. When will the awesomeness of LTE ever make it to consumers beyond just the nauseating marketing hype?
Sure, customers can buy power-packed devices that can access mobile content at blazing speeds as well as eat through batteries like Kobayashi through hot dogs, but with current data caps in place, that additional speed is eating through those buckets in record time.
Some may point out that with higher speeds, consumers are getting the information they want quicker, and that seems to make sense when you look at the numbers. But I am not a numbers guy. (In fact, my favorite number is infinity because it’s better as a word.) I tend to think that consumers will not give a second thought to how fast they are accessing information as they are likely already used to broadband speeds, and will instead use that extra time to download more data to their devices.
They will do this of course until they hit their data cap, at which point they will either have their throughput speed diminished to that of a CDPD network (acronyms!) or begin accumulating some heady overage charges. Either way, I suspect that consumer will not be happy and either take it old school by calling their carrier to complain, or take it new school and bombard message boards with rants about how terrible their carrier is.
Sprint Nextel CTO Stephen Bye acknowledged this during a keynote address when he noted that carriers need to balance out the investments needed to fortify their networks for unlimited data usage against the additional costs associated with handling customer service complaints and the potential for increased churn.
I know carriers have implemented notification systems designed to tell consumers that they are nearing their data caps, but the last thing a person wants to hear is that they are about to come to a point where a decision has to be made: either stop using their mobile phone or be prepared to pay the price.
Plus, with all of this talk about how efficient LTE is compared with 3G, why are carriers still following these 3G pricing models? Let’s get creative, people!
I heard more than one person describe potential rate plans with which carriers could incentivize people to schedule downloads at non-peak network times, using all of that wasted network capacity at 2 a.m. to download that high-definition movie. This model sort of follows what carriers did with voice traffic when they introduced free night and weekend calling, realizing that networks were being underutilized during these periods and they could then shape consumer usage to help flatten out network load. Also, carriers were able to use the ultimate in marketing terms “free” in touting their services.
There should be enough network intelligence available now to allow carriers to come up with creative ways to allow consumers to really take advantage of what this network evolution can provide. I know most do not want to relive their 3G experiences where carriers were forced to roll back unlimited plans to smaller buckets in order to save network resources. But the world is a mobile place now, and if carriers want to remain at the forefront of that movement, they need to be more willing to allow consumers to access what they want or face the possibility of being labeled the choke point of progress.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–I very much enjoy the liberties that some companies take in touting their contribution to a larger project. Some company might provide a bolt that holds down a rack or a piece of software for billing, and next thing you know they are “integral” to the entire multibillion-dollar deployment.
Not to downplay the contributions made by all parties to such builds, but let’s have some perspective here. Sure, those bolts and pieces of code are your livelihood, but are they really the linchpin that is holding everything together? Unless of course you are providing linchpins, at which point you can indeed proclaim your importance.
–I know I have been harping on Sprint Nextel lately for some of its past decision-making, so I figure I would throw in one more bit of harping while the bin is still open. I am not sure how I feel about the carrier continuing to sell WiMAX-enabled devices that it knows will be obsolete in a few years and for which the already questionable network coverage will not improve.
In these early days of “4G,” I am guessing that consumers may be aware that while current coverage may still fall short of what they get with 3G, they might assume that carriers will eventually expand coverage to meet that expanded footprint.
However, that won’t be the case with Sprint Nextel’s current WiMAX-powered “4G” offering. Clearwire has already said it will not expand that service beyond its current footprint as it waits for funding to begin building out LTE. I would hope there is a chance that at least in retail environments, salespeople are telling those consumers buying Sprint Nextel’s “4G” devices that the coverage they get now will be all they ever get.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an email at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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