A service provider business establishes their own set of access points (locations), which their customers may use, for a fee of some sort. Some customers will be subscribers, some customers will be pay-as-you-go typically paying over the air for a few hours service using a credit card. The fee for using pay-as-you-go service might be a few Euro an hour. The charging method for subscribers might allow so many hours access or so much data transfer per time period.
Typically, the tariff is set by comparison to the cost of GPRS air-time and what the market will bear. The target customer, today, is a business person or a bright young thing with disposable income. Over time, the tariffs may be expected to reduce with competition.
Generally the equipment is provided and operated by the service provider. However, the service provider can not offer their branded access anywhere where they own no infrastructure, which is unattractive to, for instance, international travellers.
This monopoly model is being superseded by the following, federated, model.
|
