Business Class Calls

I was traveling a little bit last week. A number of destinations across Europe. Waiting at the gate at one of the airports I contemplated various business models of airline industry. On short intra - continental routes the 2.0 airlines are taking over the traditional 1.0 business. Simplicity. Boarding an Easyjet flight at my hometown Krakow airport takes 15 minutes. No check - in (done online at home). Just pass the security and you are on board. No registered luggage (they cleverly have the carry - on limit twice as high as their 1.0 competition) means getting out at the destination airport is even faster. But they gladly sell various options and addons. Like seat preselection or priority boarding or flexible reservations. Seems like Value Added Services? You bet...

On the other hand the 1.0 model on inter - continental flights holds well. Especially first / business class idea of selling 50% more legroom at 300% the price. OK, you get extra glass of sparkling wine with that but really... More and more people are willing to pay huge premium to be treated better. The longer the flight the more chances business class will check in completely full. A number of times recently I tried to use my frequent flyer points to upgrade, but unfortunately the business class was already full of passengers paying high premium...

These observations brought me to the point of business class telephone conversations. Yes I still do complain on call quality. Sometimes it is very good. Especially in areas with good 3G coverage. Like Stockholm underground :) But sometimes it is awful, especially when you are at the edge of a 3G coverage or your call traverses a long path with many transcoders and voip interconnect links along the way. And still most conversations are limited to this 3kHz bandwidth we had 10 and 20 and 100 years ago... Despite my high end service plan I fell like I was squeezed in the economy cabin. Isn't it time to offer a higher class, especially for those long lasting, long distance calls? Airlines have first, business and economy. Trains have first and second. Cisco reaps a fortune for their [high quality] Telepresence systems. Thinking of Telco 2.0... why not repeat this model in mobile telephony? People will pay. A lot. So... who will be the first?