T-mobile offering folly or wisdom?

T-mobile UK announced its latest data offering. Relevant parameters: flat-rate data offer cellular/WiFi combo, HDSPA-ready for a lousy £17 + VAT per month. This offer is "aimed at the business user". The catch, you are not allowed to use it for IM and VoIP.

Anyone looking at the prices for mobile (cellular) data as compared to mobile (cellular) voice knows that Voice over mobile (cellular) IP is not going to happen. See also this piece about that. However a dramatically lower rate for mobile data, such as offered by T-mobile could change that. If the calling rates stayed the same.

Naturally the first reaction is one of disbelief, what is it that the business user does with mobile data connectivity? Talking and messaging! What is left over is looking for the nearest restaurant and the delays at the airport.

What are they thinking? When will they learn that in today's competitive telecomms market you will get customers only when you allow them to do something for the money they should give to you, not if you limit them!

Well clearly they are thinking about offering these services themselves. Conventional wisdom in the telecomms industry holds that the higher you are up the stack the more valuable your offering. Secondly the telecomms industry feels that bundling the service with the access is the only way to pay for the access. So T-mobile is bang-on as far as conventional telecomms wisdom goes.

But in my previous post I started to highlight that this conventional wisdom is overtaken by the unconventional Internet. The perceived value of Internet-based services is higher these days than that of traditional voice, and true the willingness to pay for these services is generally low. Perhaps more on that paradox later. Also true that when anything does not work the customers are generally on their own. So bundling the services to one working seamless whole has its advantages.

But with so many IP and VoIP providers to choose from, who needs one tied to your cellphone subscription? So, I think T-mobile is starting down a slippery slope.

They can not practically enforce the ban on IM and VoIP as long as the communication is not clearly SIP or does not go to and from a known provider of these services. So IM and VoIP inside a VPN or using a non-standard protocol such as my company is developing to an enterprise is undetectable, especially if a client builder will hide the tell-tale VoIP message interval in more data (flat-rate has its advantages). Also what will T-mobile do when their large customers are not going to conform to this demand, write-off the larger accounts? Not likely!

T-Mobile can also not raise the prices when they lift the IM and VoIP-ban. So they can only play for time. Time to get their own service going and time to lock enough customers into this service easing the pressure on lifting the ban, giving more time etc. Will they get this much-needed time?

The answer to that question will prove if this move is folly or wisdom. My money is on the latter, when you're down a slippery slope it is very hard to get back up.