One Way to Eliminate the ‘Free Rider’ Problem
Just stop charging. Geoff Manaugh notes:
“AT&T is launching a free wi-fi network for its customers in New York City’s Times Square,” Business Insider explained last week. “This will take a load off AT&T’s battered 3G network, by pushing peoples’ email, web, and app traffic onto wi-fi and off of 3G. And it should speed up downloads for AT&T customers in the area.” I’m reminded of Charles Komanoff’s proposed transportation policy changes for New York City, in which bus rides would always be offered free of charge, “because the time saved when passengers aren’t fumbling for change more than makes up for the lost fare revenue.” In other words, both cases suggest that offering certain urban services for free, at moments of high-intensity usage, often makes much better financial sense than charging for everything, all the time.
The flipside, of course, is that elsewhere, for the heaviest users (the so-called ‘data hogs’), AT&T is upping the pricing; and this too is the converse of Komanoff’s proposal — charging “road hogs” more for using the most network bandwidth at the most congested times.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under Congestion, Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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