It looks like we’re going to see the concept of paying for access to the Internet for some apps that cut into the revenue of the service providers.
Today, MoCoNews is reporting in the Washington Post that T-Mobile Germany is going to charge 9.95 Euros to allow VoIP services to be accessed by their customers.
I’m not at all surprised. I have been expecting this and what Director of Strategy for BT Design, Martin Geddes, refers to as “sending party pays” to rise over time as the ISP’s begin to recognize that they need some mechanism to recover lost revenue that is now going to 3rd parties.
But this is not all bad news from where i look at it. What the pricing model does is now set the bar for what operators of Voice services know they may have to factor in if they want to buy that access for their customers. I would contend that the smart operator, who can secure the “approved” status will likely be able to negotiate a better rate en masse, than the individual customers will be able to.
This also means, ala the baggage charge that airlines are now tossing around, and how that implies your bag has to arrive with you because you paid for it to travel with you, that the ISP has to insure a certain level of service quality, because their contention is that to use these services requires upkeep of the network. Their customers are not paying for future upgrades, their paying for access today to the network and they want to make VoIP calls.
My prediction is we will start seeing two kinds of pricing:
A La Carte or All you can eat, with the All you can eat being higher than today’s rates, but offering more of more services included.