Something that everybody knew — unreasonable data charges can make song downloads stupidly prohibitive. Research and Markets has released a report saying that “the cost of downloading a full-length digital song from an off-portal mobile site can cost users anything from practically nothing to $15.00 in data charges, depending on their operator and mobile data plan”. The data is normally waived for people buying from the telco, which explains why on-deck content has such a huge advantage over D2C efforts. There are some indications that some operators (at least in the UK) are offering a solution with wholesale data plans, where the content provider arranges a cheaper rate for data and can offer that in the price of the content so the purchaser knows they won’t pay extra charges. Of course, people on unlimited plans would lose out, but them’s the breaks…
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