"The Psychology of Free"

[mgrayson]

So I finally managed to get around to reading Chris Anderson's "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" [http://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261597272&sr=8-1 ] (yes, I paid for the physical copy), and I thought there were some interesting tidbits in there which were directly applicable to our community......

• Reporting on Stewart Brand's work,,, "[The Telephone company] does not sell you conversation. They really do not care what anybody says to each other. All they want is to have you pay your bill for having the phone working, and a certain amount of time on it. Content is irrelevant."

So, how relevant is content to today's mobile operator? Should your monthly mobile charge cover the creation of content? Or is that content governed by a different value-chain?

• Are we currently experiencing "uncompensated negative externalities" in the current mobile data market, where scarce RF and Backhaul resources are priced at flat rate as if they are abundant?

• Will the adoption of LTE, IP RAN, Femto, WiFI offload change the dynamic of our industry from scarcity to abundance? How will such a shift disrupt established architectural approaches and business models?

Happy holidays to all!

Mark

[ribansal]

The book seems interesting. May have to go to Barnes and Noble over the weekend to check it out.

On the thought - should mobile operators really worry about the content or not - lets compare it with another similar industry - Television, Media, Satellite, Cable, whatever you want to group it in. Is not content the king? And providing the content that the consumer wants, when he wants in the comfy of his living room?

I think the mix is what we are seeing today. There is some content that has a value that consumer pays for. And the other like SMS, Tweet, Blog etc is content creation and is just another traffic on mobile oeprator's network.

I agree that RF and Backhaul is priced as if they are abundance.

Seems like every industry which needs to capture market share goes through this phase. Once the stauration is reached, there will be multiple forms of consolidation, network sharing, new business models happening. And the price points will then return back to more considerable price points. This may take anywhere from a few years to a couple of decades though!