AI Pricing Lessons from Telco
AI companies are scaling usage-based pricing on infrastructure they do not control.
Tokens. GPUs. Inference costs. Latency guarantees.
Telecom faced this exact volatility decades ago with SMS routing, carrier pricing, and foreign exchange exposure. The result was margin collapse, runaway usage, and pricing models that broke under growth.
The central question: Can your pricing survive your own success?
Whatch this podcast with Natalie Louie, Head of Product Marketing & Pricing at RightRev and learn:
- Why Unlimited Pricing Fails in Volatile Environments Flat-rate SMS bundles flipped negative when traffic shifted to high-cost routes. AI token plans risk the same outcome when usage spikes beyond forecast.
- Why Usage Is Exposure, Not Value More usage does not automatically mean more profit. When infrastructure costs are variable, usage becomes risk.
- How to Engineer Margin Protection Natalie explains how separating hard infrastructure costs from margin components prevented discounting from destroying profitability. Guardrails must be built into product architecture, not just policies.
- Why Transparency Reduces Risk Real-time usage visibility and billing clarity shift monitoring responsibility to customers and reduce surprise margin erosion.
If you are building in AI, SaaS, CPaaS, or telecom, this episode will challenge how you structure pricing, packaging, and margin protection.