Tough question to answer but here is a start. First be cognizant that at least in the U.S you will not see notable 3G adoption till after 2005 (I can tell you all about that later). But pretending as though adoption would happen tomorrow, the 3G systems are promising bandwidths of about 2Mbps. I will take it a step further and suggest that end users on a good day will get 1Mbps. The pricing will likely be based on air time like it is today even though there is much talk of the "persistent connection" for 3G much like what you have with a DSL or cable connection today, I'll come back to the persistent connection in a minute. Don't expect air time pricing to get any cheaper than it is today, in fact it might be reasonable to consider premium air time rates for the high bandwidth connections since the network operators (Sprint, AT&T, etc.) will be paying for the 3G upgrades for a long time to come. Today, I see only 2 ways to better understand what those premium airtime rates might look like, (1) assume a 100% increase over today's rates or (2) call the network operators and ask them what is their latest train of thought. Back to the persistent connection thing, I havent looked a great enough into the details but I suppose the pricing will look like your home broadband connection except that it will be based on the wireless network operator's economics. So if I were to answer your question today, price your data transmission according to file size, expected bandwidth and an assumed airtime rate. james -----Original Message----- From: Ben Waggoner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2001 11:27 AM To: skunkworks talk Subject: [skunkworks] Cost of 3G data transmission Folks, Anyone have any idea how 3G data transmissions are going to be charged? I'm looking a rough idea what it's going to cost to transmit, say, 1MB of content. Will there be different pricing for latency critical (two-way communication) time critical (like streaming video) and bulk (like email attachment) data? Ben Waggoner Interframe Media <http://www.interframemedia.com> Digital Video Compression Consulting, Training, and Encoding Check out my Stanford compression classes: <http://newmedia.stanford.edu/spotlight_ben_waggoner.html> ******************************************************* Looking for free sales leads? Want to place your business message in front of users ACTIVELY searching for your products and services? Register your company today in streamingmedia.com's Industry Directory - http://www.streamingmedia.com/directory/ - and benefit from targeted exposure in the "yellow pages" of the streaming media industry. To add your company today, go to: http://www.streamingmedia.com/directory/add.asp ******************************************************* ------------------------------------------------------- You are currently subscribed to skunkworks To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To switch to digest mode, send email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************* Looking for free sales leads? Want to place your business message in front of users ACTIVELY searching for your products and services? Register your company today in streamingmedia.com's Industry Directory - http://www.streamingmedia.com/directory/ - and benefit from targeted exposure in the "yellow pages" of the streaming media industry. To add your company today, go to: http://www.streamingmedia.com/directory/add.asp ******************************************************* ------------------------------------------------------- You are currently subscribed to skunkworks To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To switch to digest mode, send email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
