Wireless creep

Wireless creep is an industry term in mobile cellular communications related to unnecessary consumption of wireless features and services, primarily among enterprise or business users.

Background
Enterprises commonly manage mobile cellular devices (which include cellular phone, personal digital assistant, smart phone, etc.) in groups to reduce the administration and tracking burden and to control costs. In such a scenario, mobile operators invoice monthly access plans and usage for the entire group of devices on a single invoice, rather than individual invoices for each cellular subscriber.

To accommodate these groups of mobile devices, mobile wireless operators offer "pools" of wireless minutes to enterprises or large groups, which can be used equitably or non-equitably by the users.

For example, an enterprise uses 10 cellular phones and utilize a pool of 1000 minutes per month. The pool of 1000 minutes costs the enterprise $100, resulting in a per minute cost of $.10 per minute. If a single user consumes 200 minutes, the other nine users with 800 minutes to divide between them.

However, from the enterprise perspective there is a problem with this method of offering and billing wireless services, as most users, pooled or un-pooled, do not consume exactly the amount of minutes allocated in their wireless plan. If the pool of users only consume 900 of the 1000 minutes, the effective rate is over $.11 per minute.

Conversely, if users consume more minutes than allocated in their pool, per minute rates often increase to as much as four times the effective rate in the pool. According to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2007 Wireless Industry Survey, the average percentage of Minutes of Use billed in excess of wireless plans stood at 6% in 2006.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu