Unfiltered

It’s not uncommon for the FCC and various industry associations to disagree on key issues, but in today’s world what you sometimes end up with is a battle of the blog posts. Such is the case with the recent back-and-forth between the CTIA wireless group and the FCC. The CTIA started the spat, calling the latest FCC data on bill shock “inflammatory,” with the Commission responding in its own blog post that the CTIA is “denying bill shock by distorting the facts.”

Ars Technica reported on the back-and-forth, with a lot of the discussion centering on questions regarding survey approach, the age of respondents and other technical details — All of which the CTIA contended:

“… completely disregards the evolution of the wireless marketplace and the broad array of plans available from wireless providers, such as unlimited calling or texting plans or buckets of minutes/texts that give consumers greater control over their wireless bills.”

Connected Planet’s take,
Susana Schwartz:

If the CTIA’s concern is well founded (if only 30% of the respondents in the FCC bill shock survey said they were over 18), then where are we? Whether the survey is “legit” or “bogus,” let’s pay attention to the perception of even young customers, as they are the near-future purchasers of services and plans. They will graduate and get jobs and pay bills, and they are the ones most savvy with social media and apps, etc.

The arguments should start to taper into discussions about real-world solutions to moving away from all-you-can-eat models that will create unmanageable congestion to models that influence consumer behaviors. The goal is to ensure that lower-value customers not only get the bills they expect, but also service levels that correlate to what they pay, as well as ensuring profitable customers get the quality of service they expect (and are willing to pay for). As discussed in my “Tragedy of the Commons” article, there will be “shock” by customers for as long as service providers give them whatever they want at low prices. They don’t truly feel the “value” of what is being delivered to them because their expectation right now is to consume a lot at very low prices.

Rather than continue to give high levels of quality and service to people that ultimately are “shocked” by higher prices, let’s as an industry begin to do what credit card companies and airlines have done for years: offer to consumers with small amounts of disposable income but large amounts of time the incentives to consume at different hours (perhaps through credits or discounts) so that high-value customers with disposable income and limited time can get the services they want.

That’s our take on this. Let us know what you think in the comments section below:

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