Massive price hikes and savage caps coming for mobile data

cowboy.1981

We have already seen how 3 are reducing the caps on their midband products in Ireland.

However, we have seen nothing yet, like what is starting to happen elsewhere.

Within the last week, both AT&T in the US, and O2 in the UK have announced new caps and tariffs which massively increase the price per GB for mobile data, typically by a factor of around 10 times, and completely doing away with the so called "unlimited" deals that were previously offered. The price per incremental GByte is moving to GB£10 per GByte in UK, and $10 per GByte in the US.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/att-adds-iphone-tethering-kills-unlimited-data-for-ipad-smartphones/

http://www.reghardware.com/2010/06/10/o2_limited_data_plans/

Although these plans are focused on Smartphones, the operators have clearly figured out that they were underpricing data plans.

By these standards the offers from Irish mobile operators are grossly underpriced. Expect to see huge price increases and savage lowering of the caps in Ireland in the coming months. The economies of scale here are probably worse than elsewhere, if anything.

Finally we might get midband pricing that encourages the use of mobile networks for what they are good at - modest amounts of data when on the move.

Onikage

This article (and related blog post from O2 UK's CEO) should give some insight into the thought process as well as the maths that have been pulled from someone's backside:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/06/11/o2-data-charges-punishing-the-many-to-pay-for-the-few/

http://blog.o2.co.uk/home/2010/06/offering-fair-and-transparent-access-to-mobile-data.html#more

watty

I have been pointing out since the €20 ish 10G ish packages launched with USB dongles that it's priced 1/150th to 1/300th of cost compared to voice/texts packages. It was a customer acquisition exercise. The market is more mature and as well as data "dongles" more phones are using data.

Expect 1G byte to cost €40 or more eventually.
Note the out of bundle/cap pricing: 3 about €990 per Gbyte

"Unlimited" never existed anyway, they just wouldn't tell you the limit till you broke it.

Mobile is VERY much more expensive for Data than real Broadband yet Mobile is Cheaper in Ireland?
Voice 50 mins + 50 texts for €15 price costs the Operator 1/300th of cost of 10G data on Mobile Network!

ingalway

Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question but does this mean that if you are using a wireless 3g mobile dongle, I have one from Meteor which is €19.99 per month for 15 Gb, that the contracted monthly price will be going up and the download allowance will be going down? Only just got it so not happy if this is the case.
Thanks.

cowboy.1981

ingalway wrote: »

Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question but does this mean that if you are using a wireless 3g mobile dongle, I have one from Meteor which is €19.99 per month for 15 Gb, that the contracted monthly price will be going up and the download allowance will be going down? Only just got it so not happy if this is the case.
Thanks.

If have not seen any announcements from the Irish operators, other than 3 so far. In the case of 3, they chose to notify customers by text message to their dongles(not to their phones!) that the tariff was changing, and they had to give a couple of weeks for customers to opt out. However, if you didn't spot the text message you could have been slapped on the new tariff without realizing it. They appear to have backed off a bit on this for post-pay customers.

According to the recent survey on Boards, Meteor is the best performing network, and probably the least lightly loaded, so they won't have to introduce the new tariffs as urgently as the others. I would expect to see O2 go for tiered tariffs next, as they seem to be the worst performing, and they have already implemented in the UK, so their bosses on the "mainland" will probably push them to do it soon. Expect all networks to be using tiered tariffs similar to O2 in UK within 1 year. If you are on an existing contract, you might get a reprieve for the term of your contract.

In the long term it is better for everyone to kick the bandwidth hogs off mobile and onto fixed Broadband. The performance of mobile should improve, and if you only use it when you are actually on the road, you won't need to break the lower caps.

ingalway

cowboy.1981 wrote: »

In the long term it is better for everyone to kick the bandwidth hogs off mobile and onto fixed Broadband. The performance of mobile should improve, and if you only use it when you are actually on the road, you won't need to break the lower caps.

I am on 'fixed broadband' but in my case it is broken....the max Eircom can give me is 1Mg and the max from that I ever get is 512 kbs as the lines here are so poor and they will not be improving anytime soon. Can't get UPC here so options are limited. So far Meteor mobile BB has been very good, way faster than Eircom.

watty

cowboy.1981 wrote: »

In the long term it is better for everyone to kick the bandwidth hogs off mobile and onto fixed Broadband. The performance of mobile should improve, and if you only use it when you are actually on the road, you won't need to break the lower caps.

If Mobile was only used for Mobile, instead of practically subsidised to get market share, and used as fixed because we have worst infrastructure of the whole OECD group, then I calculate that on average, performance would be about x4 better. Maybe x5 better.

If we had decent infrastructure and nationally available Broadband, then Mobile would be brilliant.

ingen

watty wrote: »

If Mobile was only used for Mobile, instead of practically subsidised to get market share, and used as fixed because we have worst infrastructure of the whole OECD group, then I calculate that on average, performance would be about x4 better. Maybe x5 better.

If we had decent infrastructure and nationally available Broadband, then Mobile would be brilliant.

the multiple ownershp changes of eircom have fecked it up.
saddled with debt, loosing cutomers by the bucket load.

danjo-xx

ingalway wrote: »

I am on 'fixed broadband' but in my case it is broken....the max Eircom can give me is 1Mg and the max from that I ever get is 512 kbs as the lines here are so poor and they will not be improving anytime soon. Can't get UPC here so options are limited. So far Meteor mobile BB has been very good, way faster than Eircom.

Hope springs eternal:D Trying Meteor this week