Does it make sense to initiate a pricing war in a wireless carrier industry that's commoditized, has little brand differentiation in service offerings and may be reduced to pipe status if it doesn't watch its back? This race to the bottom has willing runners.

Verizon Wireless' decision last week to introduce a $99.99 flat-rate plan for nationwide unlimited calling set the cat among the pigeons. Rivals AT&T Inc., T-Mobile USA and U.S. Cellular had no option but to follow suit with similar pricing packages, leaving their respective data plans as the sole service differentiators. And it's just a matter of time before we have flat-rate, all-you-can-eat data plans.

Good news for the consumer, yes. But what does it do for the health of carriers who still haven't figured out what their core brand differentiators are. Is it stressing a bar or two more on the mobile phone, thus implying stronger signals? Is it a campaign shilling fewer dropped calls? Is it a flashier logo? Is it brighter stores? Is it jazzier handsets? Is it a better data plan? Is it mobile TV?

The obvious reason touted for this move to flat-rate voice plans is that consumers don't want to worry about the minutes. That's true. Also, this seems to be an attempt to upgrade existing customers to a less complicated, but costlier plan. Another explanation: hang on to the customers you have or lose them to rival carriers.

Sooner or later the other shoe is going to drop. Wait for a major carrier to drop the monthly subscription to $79.99 -- and throw in data, for good measure. What then?

Price vice
Not that the multi-billion-dollar wireless industry needs any advice. But it should learn from other sectors that relied mainly on price and not on quality of product or customer service. The end result of their price wars was corners cut and erosion of bottom line.

Several sectors come to mind. Let's take airlines. Those who travel overseas must know they can fly from a second-tier airport in England to Brussels for less than $20 at certain times of year. Thank budget airlines such as Ryanair for this dose of egalitarianism. Not surprisingly, full-service airlines had to offer competitive rates or match the upstart. Out the chute went the edible food for a cold sandwich and a tiny measure of water.

In the United States, JetBlue Airways initiated a price war and helped lower fares between major domestic destinations. But it ran its operations on a bare-bones basis. A couple of major crises last year caused the CEO to resign. The airline hadn't spent enough on spare capacity. The JetBlue Customer Bill of Rights was the net result -- a virtue born of a woe.

What about automotive? Remember zero-percent financing? What good did that do General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and then-DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler unit? They focused on price, not quality; they pushed cars, not the driving experience. If it weren't for generous banks and complaisant auto financing units, all these carmakers would be bankrupt.

Newspapers. Yes, who remembers the scrappy price war between Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and Mort Zuckerman's Daily News? What was it about -- a tabloid for 25 cents? Have the two New York papers ever generated a decent profit in the last decade? What was their strategy against free commuter papers? Only deep pockets. And it's not stopping the reader migration to the Internet -- where the news is free.

Just three examples. No one's asking for monopolistic practices or a cartel. But what do the carriers stand for? What are their brand values? What else are they doing to engender loyalty and raise switching costs - other than the Promethean contract? How do they avoid this headlong rush toward commoditization and homogenization?

When carriers initiate a price war, they must prepare for copycat plans. Sooner or later we'll have all-you-can-eat data plans. The carriers will have to invest tens of billions of dollars more into their network to handle the large volumes of data expected to generate via smartphones. Where will they get the money if subscriber revenues flatten? Could it be â?¦ mobile advertising?