What price a 3 - some?

Last week UK 3G Mobile operator 3 UK unveiled its new prices for 3G data to its phones. While the more excitable elements of Planet Mobile were given over to gasps of ecstatic delight, more sensible elements were somewhat more sanguine.

Kate Fehrenbacher over at GigaOm puts it very well:

Today 3 announced the pricing of their X-Series service with two choices, 5 pounds ($10) or 10 pounds ($20) per month. While the company seems to have mostly stayed true to their low, flat fee, Internet-inspired intentions, they also added “fair use” guidelines — like a tiger, a carrier can’t really change its stripes.

The X-Series fair use guidelines:

- 5,000 Skype to Skype minutes per month.

- Windows Live Messenger: 10,000 messages per month

- 1GB per month for browsing

- Orb and Slingbox: 80 hours a month with X-Series Gold

3 says “where unfair use is apparent, 3 will take the appropriate measures on a case-by-case basis.” It seems like carriers still feel that truly unlimited is just not in their best business interests.

This puts the 3 pricing for 3G mobile data at about the same price levels as the 3G data cards for laptops.

( A note to our non UK readers - WiFi access in the UK is expensive, fragmented and certainly not ubiquitous, so a 3G data card is a great option to be on line when on the move)

Quite why the Big 4 feel think that a mobile phone should have a near-order-of-magnitude higher price for 3G data to a mobile than to a laptop has been unclear to me for some time. It pretty much stopped their ability to own the mobile music track market in its tracks, for example.

In fact mobile music reseller MonsterMob did a deal at 30p / Mb in May/June 2006, which was then the rate for 3G data cards - see this report from Ovum here - but Voda has dropped that rate by c 2/3 now. Be interesting to see if Monstermob's prices have changed, can't tell as the MonsterMob website appears to have morphed from a RingTone to a Social Network site. That tells its own story I guess....

As well as pricing, the other issue Mobile Internet has still not faced up to is it's insistence on adhering to the Walled Garden concept. Although the new pricing from 3 has dropped the cost of going over the wall, this has really held up Mobile Internet's ability to move with the 'Net over the last few years.

So, will the UK's big 4 join in this orgy of data price reduction now, or will they let 3 to its own (X series) devices?

It will all depend on the rate at which we spurn our current 3G data deals and get it on down with 3...I wonder, is it any coincidence Voda rang me today with a seductive offer to extend my 3G contract?