Saturday, May 8, 2010

UK Mobile Internet - Vodafone and Orange Pushing Usage based Billing (as well as Bell Canada)

 
Both Vodafone and Orange UK made some official/semi-official statements about charging Internet mobile subscribers by usage (see details below).

Usage based billing is the ultimate revenue opportunity for ISPs, as users have no idea how much traffic is generated by each transaction (web page, ebook downloaded, Skype call, file-sharing ..). Such pricing policy is not easy to sell, especially for an Internet service, that was always offered with flat-rates (mainly on the fixed side).

Even the fixed-internet service changes - see "AT&T CEO Sees Metered Pricing in Future" - here), similar concepts in the US cable market and recent news from Canada - "Canada Approves Consumption-Based Billing" - here.


Vodafone UK:
A Vodafone person responding in a formal Vodafone forum is saying (here) "We are planning to introduce Out Of Bundle charging for Pay Monthly customers from 1st June 2010 .. The charging will be as follows:
  • Monthly Bundle customers will pay £5 for every 500MB after the first 500MB
  • Customers without a monthly Bundle will pay 50p for every 10MB after the first 25MB
Whilst you've all previously been used to there not being any Out Of Bundle charging, the current information available online is clear in explaining that we could introduce such charging at any time" 

Orange  UK:

Orange UK published their iPad service plan, which is similar to the above (see "Orange offers 'pay per meg' iPad 3G data plan" - here) - "The key plan bills data at a rate of five pence per megabyte up to a monthly maximum of £40. That's 800MB."


I wonder if Orange can tell if someone is using his existing SIM in a new iPad.

The new micro-SIM does not seem to be a challenge, as the electronic contact area is no different to that of a conventional SIM. A Do-it-Yourself guide - here.




Related posts:

  • DPI Deployments - Part4: UK - Everybody is Doing it ! - here
  • Orange UK - Tiered Service Plan - Productivity to the Customer and the Network - here
Posted by Azi Ronen at 4:35 AM
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1 comment:

  1. AadiJune 9, 2015 at 8:46 AM


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