Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, on Thursday acknowledged that smaller European mobile operators may mount “spoilers” to the UK telecoms group’s strategy by offering cheap deals to smartphone customers. It is planning to charge customers according to how much data they consume and what type of service they require. Business people needing fast e-mail access at any time of day could pay more than teenagers who are willing to download data only at night.

Mr Colao said the new charging model “will be conducive” to increasing the average amount of revenue secured from its customers each month, so long as they consume more data over time. Asked about the possibility of smaller rivals unleashing a price war, he told a Morgan Stanley investor conference in Barcelona: “Of course there could be spoilers here and there but in the long run the economics of data are hard to be spoiled tactically.”

Interesting is Orange’s decision to offer a cheap rate for data with the Samsung Tablet – an additional 1GB of data every month that can only be used after 16.00, which might be a UK first but certainly won’t be the last. Such innovative pricing will become normal over the next few years, as the intelligence in the network increases and operators seek new ways to redress the current imbalance between revenue and loading – where voice brings in 70 per cent of the revenue despite making up only five per cent of the traffic.

bron: FD en TheRegister