Mobile Data - Is Price The Be-All And End-All?

With my monthly data bill getting higher and higher, I've been very curious about the "all you can eat, except it's capped" data services that several cellphone operators have started offering.  Michael Mace over at Mobile Opportunity takes the time to look in-depth at the future of data on your handheld, pulls the rug out from underneath the belief that flat-rate pricing is key, and even goes as far as to offer five steps that, in his opinion, will make cellular broadband a success.

"What needs to be moved to mobile networks isn't just the Web's applications or price structure, it's the Web's open business model. We need to run a huge number of experiments in order to figure out what applications users will want in mobile data. No single company is capable of doing all that work on its own. The only way to make the experiments happen is to set up a vibrant, chaotic ecosystem in which thousands of developers will be free to rapidly try and fail at a huge number of things." Michael Mace

Well worth a read if you're curious about the direction operators are going in.

Will flat-rate pricing make mobile data take off? [Mobile Opportunity]