Network abusers or valuable customers?

Whenever a new communications service is launched, the operators are worried about those who will “abuse” the service – paradoxically, these people can also be called early adopters or power users, and there is often a very fine line separating the categories. These are the people who will sign up for an “unlimited” service assuming, perhaps naívely, that because it says unlimited, it is unlimited, and then use it accordingly.

Of course we all know there is no such thing as unlimited (even less so in wireless), and this category of people have brought down more than one unlimited flat-fee service around the world soon after they have been launched. Of course, it boils down to the fact that on a limited medium, you cannot offer an unlimited service. But then again, a flat-rate plan for something like mobile data, streaming video or browsing is exactly what the consumers like. So there must be some clause (according to traditional wisdom ideally printed in very small font) that somehow sets some limits on the unlimited.

Now the trend seems to be that such “abuse” is being limited by putting bandwidth caps on it, like Saunalahti on their €10/month all-you-can-eat mobile data plan; they reserve the right to de-prioritize the traffic and limit the throughput to 64kbps if needed. Something like that is exactly what you have to do to maintain service quality for all, but I don’t quite agree with the implementation. Instead of burying the limitations under some obscure ToS agreement, I think it should be clearly stated what constitutes as “fair use” – even if this figure would change frequently as the network improves. Something similar to Google’s GMail “space counter” at the bottom of the interface, a constantly increasing number that lets you know how much space you have at your disposal. We need a simple traffic light or a gauge for our service use.

Another key issue that needs to be tackled is a change of attitude – treating the network abusers as valuable users and early adopters much rather than something that needs to be kept away or gotten rid of. Often your “abusers” are the key people for viral marketing, the ones telling about their great experiences (providing it has been one) to other people. They can expose weak points in the service delivery by, in essence, stress-testing it. They even provide valuable data as to how more and more subscribers will behave in the future.

Because that is what will inevitably happen – if their usage wouldn’t increase, today’s abuser is merely tomorrow’s power user – and an average customer a little bit further down the road.

Photo by freefoto.com