DISQUS

A late followup question: what do you do when adoption has already started? WHat happened is you already have the real data through to, say, 2007 in your example above? Is there a way to fill in the rest of the S curve adapting to the existing data run? There ought to be a way to drive the variables from the historic data, but I can't quite work out how...

The funny thing about this is that it still needs to be said. People were claiming that Wifi would destroy 3G back in 2001 - it was a stupid idea then and it's still a stupid idea.

On the other hand, fixed wimax is pretty decent as a last-mile solution in emerging markets - an alternative to copper for fixed connections.

(ha ha ha)
Welcome to the rest of the world, guys. Most other countries have had this ever since broadband started. And most of those countries have significantly faster broadband speeds than the USA. And somehow, the internet hasn't come to an end in those countries.

File under 'provincial americans outraged to discover how the world works - as ever'

You're missing the point - the price of a DVD reflects the whole cost of the product, including video production, not just the marginal cost of the disk itself. So with SMS - the price you pay reflects the cost of building and running the whole network, not just a few bits of data.

This isn't really an SMS question - its a segmentation question. MNOs are trying to segment their service according to value rather than raw network capacity measures that consumes don't care about. This isn't entirely foolish - 160 bits as an SMS is worth more to me than 160 bits as part of a 5 meg video. Sure, over time HSPA and LTE will lower the cost level on all of these services, but you will ultimately have to continue contributing a certain average ARPU if you want the networks to exist.

This isn't so much the tail wagging the dog as the flea wagging the dog. SMS is a very widely used service - far more widely used than email, incidentally - with a pretty well established pricing strucutre. So it breaks an option Twitter would like to implement? SO WHAT!

The whole 'SMS isn't much data so it should be free' argument is frankly pretty stupid. You don't argue that the marginal cost of a DVD is $0.05, and therefore no DVD should sell for more than that, do you? Mobile operators have a very real and substantial cost base to cover, and it is inane to try to cherry-pick parts of their price plan and argue about the unerlying cost of delivering this or that option.