Forgive me as I play devil's advocate here for a moment on behalf of KPN. To be clear, I despise most of the carriers and hope they burn in hell.
There is an enormous amount we don't know about the structure of KPN's pricing and expenses (or any other Telco's for that matter). Consider the following fictional company:
1) XYZ Inc. has a voice only network. Running this service costs $35 per customer, covering the cost of fixed infrastructure - they charge $45 and walk away with $10 profit.
2) To meet market demand, XYZ upgrades their service to include data. The cost of providing data is $10, bringing the total cost up to $45/user. They charge $15 for this service, offering voice+data for a total of $60 ($15 profit).
This example is terribly over-simplified, but illustrates the point well enough. With the introduction of VoIP, the user can now drop their voice plan and cover both under their data for $15. This is below the cost of servicing the customer. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case for KPN, or any other telecom company for that matter - I'm just suggesting:
- The cost of wireless services is primarily in fixed infrastructure
- These fixed costs are built into their pricing scheme
- The cost of operating voice/data vs data only is not proportional to their pricing of voice/data vs data only.
I guess the point of my rant here is that while I have no doubt this company was trying to get more money, I don't think the cost of your or my data package is enough to cover the fixed cost of maintaining the network. Obviously we (or I) don't have most of the information.
