If T-Mobile were a doctor, would it measure the Pulse with an EKG or a pay-as-you-go plan?

In case you were never a big ER fan, this is an EKG. And the Pulse being refereed to is a new smartphone being put out in Europe through T-Mobile that is a pay-as-you-go smartphone. Not to mention, it uses Google’s highly praised Android OS, making it the first pay-as-you-go data plan using Android.

This is a big step in lowering the barrier to entry for smartphone technology because let’s face it: the stuff is expensive. As Saul Hansell with the New York Times points out, people want cheap service. Truth be told, not even half of the PerBlue team uses smartphones as their personal phone and we work with the damn things (no, Apple does not give out phones to developers but I’m sure no one would be against that idea…).

The details of the contract are still to be nailed down, such as whether people pay according to the amount of data used or by the time users spent online. There could be a tendency for carriers to favor a model based on data usage because it is easiest to measure. It could also discourage over-use of the network, because sometimes users can be data whores.

We would love to encourage a plan measured on time, it’s easier to relate to and that could help people feel more comfortable in testing the waters. The pricing breakdown could be something like this:

• Pay-as-you-go: $0.01/minute
  
• 1000 minutes of data use: $5/month
• 3000 minutes of data use: $10/month
• 8000 minutes of data use: $20/month
• Unlimited data use: $30/month
  

Either way, we are pretty excited about the possibilities with this. MetroPCS has already started a prepaid plan with the Blackberry Curve, which is a great start to hopefully bringing more smartphone data plans that are easier to understand and easier for people to try out.

Also, bringing technology like Android to people through a prepaid plan gives it a major point of differentiation from the behemoth iPhone. We want to promote competition so that these giants can keep pushing each other to create new technology because productivity benefits from competition. Notice how the iPhone hasn’t changed much in it’s last iteration? That certainly won’t be allowed with Google creeping on its tail.