This was presented by Roderick Randall, Senior Managing Director of Vesbridge Partners at the 21st Century Communication.

First thing come to my mind: Stupid.

Yes, he made good argument about the need for price differentiation but it is nothing new. Different people attach different value to the same service; that voice call to your doctor when you have heart attack is much higher value then your ave. teenagers chating on the phone and hence you get the most value when you get people to pay what they value for. That’s the problem with flat rate charging.

But the answer to that problem is not making the network more intelligent – it is about how you can do price differentiation. Traditionally, supermarket uses discount coupons to do that, telcos provides different packages, ISP provides bundles etc etc. The answer lies in marketing and package – try the ‘price confusion bundling’ trick (ever try comparing two mobile plans from two operators?)

Because like it or not, Stupid Network has won. People want Stupid Network and people will pay for Stupid Network. Advising Telcos to build an Intelligent Network today is not only bad advise, it is sucidal – does not matter how nice it is for the telco, no use if there is no customers.