Assuming that 5G delivers on its promise of faster speeds, around a third of customers indicated that they’d be willing to pay $5.06 more per month on average, versus $4.40 more per month for mobile customers, PwC says.
More would pay a premium for 5G if it provided “better quality video” on their mobile device. Some 29 percent of respondents suggested they would pay more for better video, compared to 25 percent of respondents similarly willing to pay more for better video on their fixed service.
The key caveat here is that most people do not know what the term 5G means. They have never had a concrete experience with 5G. They may not know they have to buy new devices. They have not been presented with a concrete offer. Nor have they been able to evalue better 4G services against new 5G offers.
Moreover, it is possible that the real value of 5G for new use cases will emerge most clearly on the enterprise side of the market, to support internet of things use cases, not consumer broadband. We soon will begin to test actual demand in the real world, and surprises could emerge.
People simply cannot make fully rational choices about products they have no experience with, with no actual pricing information, terms and conditions of use. Steve Jobs’ advice likely is warranted in that regard. People cannot tell you whether they want a product they have never seen.
A survey by PwC found that many consumers believe they already pay too much for home internet access. Some 51 percent of respondents agreed that their fixed network service was too costly.
Some 36 percent of respondents likewise agreed that their mobile internet access was too costly.
That finding is somewhat paradoxical, as PwC notes the average cost of fixed network internet access is $0.34 per gigabyte, compared to $20.02 per GB for some mobile services. Others would contest that characterization of mobile internet costs.
Most would likely agree that mobile data tends to cost an order of magnitude more than fixed access. But many believe 5G millimeter wave networks will produce mobile costs in line with costs of fixed networks. That already can be seen in some cases for 4G networks.
Spectrum abundance is going to replace capacity scarcity in the mobile business in the 5G era. The key point is that the historic price relationships between fixed and mobile internet access services are changing, with price parity between mobile and fixed network prices becoming possible for the first time.
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