Mobile phone costs and roaming questions

I'm looking to determine the cost (rough estimates are okay) of making and receiving local calls on mobile phones in various countries. I know of course that in the USA the caller uses "minutes" in their plan for both sending and receiving calls. In Europe (EU only?) receiving calls does not cost the user - except while roaming, in which case, the called party pays the roaming cost, while the caller pays for the call to the home carrier of the called party.

But what about in Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, Asia, etc.?

Is there a source of a list of typical charges? I need call origination, call receiving and roaming. I don't need detailed rate sheets, only relative costs from country to country.

Also, a second question: I understand that there is a realtime database that allows mobile operators to determine the network on which any specific mobile phone is currently roaming. My question is: is this database accessible to wireline carriers? Can a carrier other than the home carrier for a mobile user determine the network on which a user is currently roaming? Is there a whitepaper that I can access to learn about the technical and regulatory aspects of this database?

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

David

Reply to
David
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Canadian cell phones work the same way that US phones do, with airtime costs charged to the phone user. My experience is that the per-minute rates are comparable to the US, but the Canadian mobile telcos still charge long distance which doubles the cost for calls that aren't to local numbers.

Everywhere else, it's caller pays.

I would be rather surprised if it were.

R's, John

Reply to
John L

I seriously doubt the existence of such a global (national?) database. Each MSC (Mobile Switching Center) has a HLR (Home Location Register) that, among a lot of other functions, "keeps tabs" on all it's subscriber whereabouts. It forwards triggers, etc. associated with a roaming subscriber to the visited location's VLR (Visited Location Register) associated with visited location.

AFAIK, there does not exist a real time database of all roaming subscribers.

Reply to
Jack Adams

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