Used all your mobile data? Why not buy your mate's excess bits? China Mobile has come up with a rather interesting way to help out customers who run out of data before the end of the month – a new trading platform which allows other customers to sell data bundles they haven’t used. The 2nd exchange market, aka "2cm", is a new app which the operator’s Hong Kong 4G Pro Service Plan customers …
Never mind your wife, what's in it for China Mobile?
I would guess that one of the biggest earners for mobile networks around the world is people incurring the punitive data and voice rates when they go outside their bundle. With this "innovation" the mobile operator gets nothing for a net increase in network data use (or gets none of the pure margin extra revenue that it currently would).
Why not simply offer a fair call and data rate to all users outside of the bundles in the first place?
"Hey Mr. Politburo, no need for laws; look how *fair* we a being!"
Hardly an issue in China. Compliance is binary - you're in with the politicians (and probably bunging them some, or even run by them), or you're not. And if you're not then sticking to the letter of the law won't help you one bit. You will soon find your employees have mysteriously fallen out of windows, or been placed under house arrest, and your commercial partners have vanished like rice in a refugee camp.
If you are in a competitive market sometimes breaking the unwritten rules can give you the edge. Allowing punters to trade their extra capacity is a USP, right now. More people subscribe, they hope. And this is good for the consumer - others networks will have to follow, if the initiative is successful.
I've been waiting for a network to abolish all charges for text messages. Seems like a lot of money for a lot of old rope - transmitting a few characters for a few micro-seconds over a network that will be there, text messages or not - it will only take one hard-up network to give it a go - a bit like the advent of low cost airlines. Also, waiting 3 days for a cheque to clear when it is a patently unnecessary amount of time. It seems like collusion to me, until one of the player's hand is forced.
I'm similarly puzzled @ledswinger.
Unless china mobile take a cut from each transaction then surely they're just doing themselves out of the extra cash generated when users go over their limit.
unless i'm not seeing the angle then these people would otherwise have simply spent extra on their bill.
Part of any service providers profit margin is always in the lower usage customers partially subsidising the higher users. T'was ever thus.
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