With competition in the mobile industry growing, mobile operators are now considering flat-rate pricing as the best way to meet customer expectations and to stimulate the take-up of mobile broadband services. Although mobile customers will appreciate the freedom to talk or be online as much as they like, operators will eventually face a very serious issue:
How to meet growing capacity requirements in the network, while ARPUs are constantly decreasing? We think, it’s time to put the network access back into the pricing equation by establishing and offering distinct network based service classes for different customer groups.