A majority of mobile executives agree that as networks struggle to keep up with data traffic over the next few years, carriers will start charging different rates depending on the time of day, according to a global report that surveyed 228 senior execs across the industry. The survey was conducted last year by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by ByteMobile, which sells data management solutions to carriers. Results found that 44 percent of respondents disagreed that there was sufficient capacity to handle operators’ and users’ needs over the next three years, and more than half of all respondents agreed that “an important revenues source for operators” was that carriers would start charging variable prices for bandwidth consumption at different times of the day.
On consumption: Joel Brand, ByteMobile’s Senior Director of Product Management said growth will occur in both the number of data subscribers and data usage. This is supported by Infonetics Research, which has predicted there will be more than a billion mobile broadband users by 2013 compared to 210.5 million at the end of 2008, reports GigaOm. The heavy usage comes from laptops. Brand said that even though laptop users represent a small number of subscribers, they account for about 85 to 90 percent of mobile data worldwide.
On solutions: Brand says there are three main ways operators are planning on handling an increase in data traffic. The first is to keep building out the network to the point where there’s personal base stations in people’s homes. The second is by using new technology such as LTE that offers more capacity. The third is creative business programs and rate plans, which will include policies intended to shape human behavior. One such plan could offer cheaper rates for data outside of peak times, which at first glance doesn’t make a lot of sense: The general wisdom is that people use mobile data when they’re on the move and don’t have another option. However, a lot of surveys have shown many people view mobile content in the house, and they’ll could easily start downloading content in slow times for viewing in peaks times. This already happens for voice plans, so people are used to the idea. As for coming up with a solution for laptops, Brand said this could lead to another rate plan — the hourly or daily access plan. Brand said that the hotel he had just stayed in charged 17 pounds (US$25) for 24 hours of internet access, which is far more than any carrier plan. As laptops increasingly have 3G cards short-term plans could become common.
On changing expectations of “unlimited”: Of course, trying to shape people’s behavior with an unlimited data plan is difficult, but as Brand pointed out pretty much no-one has a truly unlimited data plan — they’re all capped in some way. Either there’s a limit to the amount of data which can be downloaded per month before users are blocked or charged, or by shaping (limiting the throughput) of the traffic based on time of day or application used.
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