Re:AT&T Cracking Down on Free Tethering via Jailbroken iPhones
by unwind on Friday March 18, 2011 @06:46AM
(#2339975)
"Should" is, I guess, depending on your perspective here.
As a bandwidth user (=carrier customer), I don't think it should matter.
As a bandwidth provider (=carrier), I would probably think that different use cases provide different levels of value to the customer, and thus can motivate different prices.
You might argue that bandwidth to a computer is "more worth" than bandwidth to a smart phone, since the computer has more power do to things with that bandwidth. That also means that, to a first approximation, customers can just plain use more bandwidth from a computer, which of course also makes it interesting to charge more for the ability to do that. And so on.
As a bandwidth user (=carrier customer), I don't think it should matter.
As a bandwidth provider (=carrier), I would probably think that different use cases provide different levels of value to the customer, and thus can motivate different prices.
You might argue that bandwidth to a computer is "more worth" than bandwidth to a smart phone, since the computer has more power do to things with that bandwidth. That also means that, to a first approximation, customers can just plain use more bandwidth from a computer, which of course also makes it interesting to charge more for the ability to do that. And so on.