Mobile Phone Data Prices Must Fall Below US$5 Per Mb

A new Strategy Analytics Report identifies current levels of consumer GPRS pricing as a bottleneck to the demand for higher bandwidth mobile media services now coming to market. Operators have been moving in the right direction by making GPRS available on a pay-per-use basis. Senior Analyst, Philip Taylor, notes, "Compared with one year ago, the availability of pay-per-use charging models for packet data is widespread. The least expensive schemes however, are those which make their low prices conditional on subscription to a mid to high-end voice price plan."

David Kerr, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice, adds, "Although the 2002 launch of licensed versions of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode by the likes of KPN Mobile has served to catalyze the market for consumer packet pricing models, non-tied pay as you use GPRS prices are most commonly found in the $10 - $20 per Mb range, still well above our recommended $5 per Mb sweet spot. Furthermore, this trend towards separating transport and service charges is less than ideal for consumer charging where operators' revenues are tied to transport, a commodity product, whose value is likely to rapidly erode. Strategy Analytics recommends that operators move as quickly as possible towards value-based costing models, which integrate transport and service charges."

Posted to the site on 10th July 2003