Dean Bubley: We're all subsidising the truly-mobile users.....

Dean Bubley posts at Disruptive Wireless that in a talk from Swisscom it was "mentioned the fact that their average mobile customer generates 70% of their calls (and revenue) from just 3 network cells." Bubley guesses that one is "at home, one at work/school, and presumably another one at their local pub / shop / town centre."

Based on this observation, Bubley wonders if "the really "clever" (and expensive) bits of the network, like cell-to-cell handover for example, aren't actually used that much."

He goes on to state that "essentially, the 90% of people using their mobiles on the sofa at home are subsidising the 10% who are actually driving down the motorway or sitting on a train."

Bubley concludes that "up to 20% of a 3G phone's sales price goes in patent royalties, I wonder just how much of that costly IPR only gets used once in a blue moon. Never mind patents being based on "how important they are to a standard", how about pricing them on "how often they're actually used""

An interesting thought. I wonder who's is subsidizing my usage in my out of the way neck of the woods....