100GB of monthly mobile data allowance — why not arbitrage?

A few months ago, I upgraded to a new phone and a 100GB data package at a very attractive price. My monthly usage has historically been perhaps around the 5GB mark at the most. So, this for me has been a luxury — I can listen to songs, stream videos endlessly without having to worry about going over! However, I thought how nice it would be if I could sell the 95GB of my monthly data allowance to others who may require that capacity and benefit from the arbitrage? Surely, there is always demand from tourists who are on holidays or others who may temporarily be around my location but whose mobile provider coverage may not be as good as my provider’s. There may even be demand from small businesses who may be able to pool together data packages from multiple retail users like I than rely entirely on business data plans from the ISPs.

In the last few years, distributed ledger technology has seen reasonable practical usages*. Blockchains (as the technology is more commonly known) allows ‘smart contracts’ to automate the settlement process. This inspires me to think of over the top innovations to trade excess data with market segments and generate value for not just the buyer and seller but also for the telecoms providers. The concept is time tested in other areas of telecoms — consider discount mobile service providers like Lycamobile whose business started by targetting specific (eg with calling plans for specific countries) demographics and offering data and voice products that arbitraged the wholesale and retail price points of unutilised bandwidth from the major telephony service providers like BT, Vodafone etc.

The diagram below indicates the salient points about the hypothetical product and the demand-supply relationships that could sustain it. I also include a conceptual architecture diagram that could form the foundations of this proposition. I welcome your views on this.

Below is a conceptual view of how a distributed ledger for trading excess data may look like and how it could generate value for the buyer, seller as well as the telecoms providers:

Win-Win-Win for all parties….

*To know more about tangible blockchain initiatives in the Telecoms industry, read more here -> https://www.ledgerinsights.com/category/industries/technology-media-telecoms/page/6/