two points:
I think low transfer fees will also render the referral system ineffective. There would be very little reason to upgrade memberships and people won't be incentivized by getting a few cents trickling in each month from referrals.
and the "first one's free" salesman trick
We need a sales team, and we need to pay them. Where's the money going to come from to pay them, and what is there incentive to sign up "big" clients?
At the same time, no one will try out a superior product if cost appears to be a barrier to entry.
Look at what google's doing now with google docs enterprise... they are making it free/cheap so you adopt them and don't even try microsoft.
What is unique to the BTS network? These can have high fees
1) Decentralized Market
2) Smart Coins
What is not unique to BTS? these can have low fees
1) Transfer of cryptocoins (e.g, the BTS coins themselves)
Each fee should be set based on a competitive pricing model. BTS should trade with BTC level of fees.
Market and SmartCoins should trade with polo and paypal level fees, respectively.
If network bandwidth starts limiting transactions, then fees can be made proportional to the true "network cost" (which might mean raising transaction fees). Assuming unlimited network bandwidth, fees should maximize revenue and therefore at least be competitive with competing tech.