Service Providers Need "Qualitative" Distinction, Not "Quantitative"

Quality, in all consumer products or services, ultimately is what the consumer says it is, not what the supplier claims it is.

So it is that mobile voice “quality” (not the high-definition voice that is possible when all endpoints to a connection can take advantage of the high-definition voice) is almost always inferior to fixed network “quality,” but consumers are willing to tolerate the inferior “voice quality” because the total bundle of benefits mobility represents outweigh the disadvantage of “poorer sound quality.”

In other words, people prefer to use mobile voice, in comparison to fixed network voice, not because the “mobile voice”  feature actually is “better.” In fact, most would agree the mobile voice experience (in the absence of high-definition voice on each end point) is demonstrably worse.

But overall experience quality is better with mobility because it is personal and ubiquitous, while the  device does many other valuable things. So in one clear sense, mobile voice represents higher consumer-perceived quality, even if it also represents worse performance.

That is an issue with some other products, such as internet access. Quality tends to be defined by speeds or coverage; quantitative measures, in other words.

Consultant Martin Geddes has consistently argued that quantity is not substitute for quality, where it comes to internet access services. Geddes also has argued that it is mathematically impossible to implement network neutrality rules when user experience emerges from the total and collective interaction of all users, networks, applications and protocols that are part of unmanaged systems (even when some sub-networks are “sort of” managed).

Basically, Geddes argues, you would require the ability to measure, to determine whether experience is degraded by deliberate actor intent, or simply the congestion or latency that emerges from all the contending and cooperating entities.

But it is precisely quality, not quantity, that matters for user experience or application “performance.” So markets for quality are part of the solution to user experience, Geddes argues.

Up to this point, it has been very hard for ISPs to figure out any way “quality” can be marketed, instead of quantity. Even on the retail offer front, “price” is another quantitative emphasis.

To a large extent, that ability to differentiate on “qualitative” dimensions is what service providers hpe network functions virtualization (NFV) will help them do, at least to some extent.

Virtualized networks might offer “bandwidth on demand” or “latency on demand” features that are qualitative features rather than quantitative differences.

That, you might argue, still is quite some ways from other higher forms of differentiation at the application, content, community and functions level. Bundle offers provide at least some inkling of the “qualitative” differentiation we probably will need to see more of.

Retail mobile bundles of device, service features, content and so forth provide examples.