Billing systems delaying flat rate data pricing?
Barron’s has a story about the financial woes of France Telecom. Tucked in at the end of the story is an unrelated item from Steve Werber, a money manager in the U.K. who attended the 3GSM conference in Cannes:
“Werber also relates a couple of interesting notes from the sidelines of the congress, one of the industry's most important. After talks with executives at the wireless operators and equipment vendors, he believes wireless data telecommunications won't be adding much to operator total revenue growth this year, something that will disappoint many investors.”
“Next generation handsets won't be ready in significant quantities until the fourth quarter, he says, and, more importantly, the systems to bill customers for data transmission by type of content instead of simply by minute usage won't be ready until late 2002 or early 2003.”
Dr. J’s year-ago prediction receives another confirmation. But there hasn’t been a great deal of attention given to billing systems. I understand that these are incredibly complicated software programs, especially when the current operator is the result of a series of mergers and needs to merge different billing systems, as is true with many in Europe and the U.S. Companies, which have not completed an upgrade of their billing systems to accommodate data, might charge high prices for data on a MOU basis in order to avoid having heavy data users inundate the network. After the billing systems have been fixed to accommodate per-MB billing, more attractive flat rate pricing plans could be offered.
Seybold has complained vociferously about Verizon’s pricing. Does anyone know whether the Verizon and Sprint billing systems can accommodate large numbers of data users on per-MB plans now? Could the need to finish an update of its billing system be a reason for Sprint’s decision to launch nationwide in mid-2002 rather than piecemeal?
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