Flat Fee Data & Calling
I wonder if we will soon see a true flat rate for mobile devices? Having travelled now for about a week internationally, I realized I would happily pay let's say Euro 100 per month for flat everything (actually maybe even a bit more as I am heavy user......April's bill will easily be Euro 300 plus). It has to include roaming and flat has to mean flat...no data caps, no geograhic restrictions. If the carriers were to offer this rate, would enough people jump on it to make it worth their while? I bet it would and when you consider it, wouldn't you rather have ten times as many users paying you Euro 100 per month up front instead of 1 user whom you milk and the rest avoiding you like the plague? I'm also sure someone will eventually offer this but who? Such an offer is absolutely necesary for things such as location based services and presence functionality to take hold. Give it to me down the road for Euro 50 per month and I'll completely ditch wLAN and any kind of wire to my home or office, going completely to 3G (this is 5 years out though in my opinion and who knows what to expect of 4G?)
On a related note, my friend Pat Phelan's company makes the Maxroam - http://maxroam.com - SIM cards, which are great for global roaming. Do you have one? If not, would you like to try it? I'd be curious to see how you'd get on with Maxroam on your next trip. Let me know and I'll have a word with Pat.
Posted by:Jackie Danicki | May 03, 2008 at 08:04 AM
The problem there is that you have to switch SIM cards. It's a temporary solution but is what is sufficient now as there aren't that many travelers internationally who need these services yet to such an extent. The carriers have no incentive to be first-movers here. It's most likely the thing to do though until we've come far enough along that the carriers make something available. Unfortunately there is no data involved in these rates. Maxroam's main competitor I believe is United Mobile (who received quite a large financing round from Accel) and they also don't have data yet as far as I can tell.
Posted by:Paul J. | May 03, 2008 at 10:23 AM
Actually just checked and saw that United Mobile already has data. I may actually try them out next trip over end of May.
Posted by:Paul J. | May 03, 2008 at 10:40 AM