Monday, June 8, 2009

Sprint Offers Corporate Liable Customers $39.99 Mobile Broadband

Sprint is Selling a $39.99 mobile broadband service for "corporate liable" accounts, providing 500 MBytes of data monthly, a bucket Sprint says is two times what Verizon offers and 10 times what AT&T offers at the same price point.

In addition, customers pay only five cents per for each additional megabyte of usage, which is less than half what the competition’s $39.99 plan charges for overage. Verizon's $39.99 plan has a 250 MB cap and charges 10 cents per MByte for overage.

AT&T's $40 plan has a 50 MByte cap and $1.00 per MByte for overages. 

The AT&T "moderate user" plan is probably enough for users who basically only check email and do some light Web surfing. 

The Verizon plan probably is enough for traveling workers who use the Web pretty heavily on the road and check email. 

The Sprint plan probably is sufficient for traveling workers who watch streaming video to a certain extent. 

The assumptions are monthly email consumption of about a couple Mbytes a month and per-day Web consumption of a couple of megabytes a day a day when out of the office. 

The issue is video streaming, which will be the driver of overages for most users. Most enterprise workers who are not watching tons of video probably only require a couple of gigabytes of usage each month. 

If one assumes a worker at a desk most of the day, and really using the Web heavily, could consume 50 Mbytes to 100 Mbytes each day, you have some idea of how to estimate usage. Most workers probably do not consume even that much. 

On the road, most people are doing other things, so it wouldn't be unusal to see daily consumption drop far behow behavior seen at a desk.

Perhaps 5 Mbytes a day would be typical. Of course, every user is different, but most enterprise workers who travel a couple days a month, and are in meetings or doing technical support will not even use 5 Mbytes a day when on the road. 

Streaming video, though, will upset all those assumptions. 

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