Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Metered Data, Prepaid Data

Tim Bray suggests metered billing for mobile data is the way to go. Me, I think it is a terrible idea for psychological reasons, and it would be a serious threat to companies like Google that thrive on people freely using online resources. It'd push people to block ads, use local apps over on-line services and generally limit how much they do online.

For psychological reasons it's better to go with pre-paid data rather than metered, and to make sure that going over the limit does not incur extra, unexpected charges. Here is my Google+ post with much more detail: Metered Data and Prepaid Data


This leads to a separate question: What am I to do with posts like the one I have on Google+? On one hand, it's pretty long so it fits better here on the blog. On the other, the people that have circled me on Google+ are much more likely to be interested in this sort of thing than you here. It feels kind of wasteful to double-post the same text on both places.

For now I'll try doing thing like this: post longer bits either here or on Google+, then give a short summary and a link on the other place. If anyone have better suggestions I'm all ears.

3 comments:

  1. I'm now on my uncle's laptop and he uses one of those mobile internet contracts. 10 gb and metered, but I remember 5 years ago having just 512mb available for a month and that we had to browse carefully.
    I second that prepaid is better on first hand; should you pass the limit, it gets blocked. If metered, after passing the limit, works (slower) and hasn't to be paid extra, it's ok. But paying per MB after passing a limit is a no-no for me. Maybe the bill will bring a surprise.

    As of posting on G+ and the blog; I'm not on G+ and here it's a much more direct and faster place to get. Posting a summary with link should be fine. I'm not particularly inspired lately so no ideas about this.

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  2. Thanks. It works OK for you to follow the link to G+ though? I don't want to link to stuff that people can't read without having to join something.

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  3. Yes, it's fine. I'm able to read everything except I can't post a comment there. No problem as it can fit here too.

    For a G+ outsider, it's much easier to find the material through the blog. I wouldn't know how to find your posts there without the blog and it's linking.

    I might join G+ later this year.

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Comment away. Be nice. I no longer allow anonymous posts to reduce the spam.