Carriers all over the world are suffering from an ever-increasing amount of data traffic on their 3.5G networks: the proliferation of high-end smartphones and (especially) netbooks has led to data usage increasing in an almost-exponential fashion. As an example, I used to use about 90MB a month when on my Treo…and currently burn over 1500MB a month with the MSI Wind (love these Windows Updates) and the XPERIA X1
MocoNews reports that carriers may soon start to charge more for data traffic caused at “rush hour”:
A majority of mobile executives agree that as networks struggle to keep up with data traffic over the next few years, carriers will start charging different rates depending on the time of day, according to a global report that surveyed 228 senior execs across the industry. … and more than half of all respondents agreed that “an important revenues source for operators” was that carriers would start charging variable prices for bandwidth consumption at different times of the day.
Even though I personally see little benefit from this (as users will “flee” from rush hours, thereby creating overload before and/or afterwards), it nevertheless remains a possibility which overloaded carriers could try out of desperation. What do you think?
Image (c): abc texte/Dr. Kohrs – no reproduction permitted
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