Incoming Calls: Charged? [telecom]

.... or just check their web page.

Most of the providers have checked out, offer two separate sorts of plans per DID:

- Unmetered - no charge for incoming calls. In some cases there's an upper limit to the no-charge calls (e.g. 2000 minutes/month), which seems to be intended to separate "residential and small business" usage, from "call-center" applications... the latter end up over the limit.

- Metered - a set rate per minute for all incoming calls.

The "metered" accounts are cheaper - e.g. $2 for a metered DID, $4-$5 for an unmetered DID.

CallCentric offers "pay per minute" DIDs for $1.95/month plus $0.015 per minute, as well as "residential unlimited" DIDs for $5.95 and "office unlimited" for $8.95. Outbound calls are billed separately (and, once again, they have "pay by minute" and "unlimited" plans, at significantly different prices per month).

If you receive only a small number of calls, the per-minute plans are a better deal. If you receive many (or long) calls, the flat-rate plans make sense.

Hi Pete, I think any VoIP provider that adopted such a policy wouldn't get many customers.

Can I expand this into a discussion of the relative merits of the US and Canadian cell phone models where the receiving party pays, verses the almost-rest-of-the-world model where the originating party pays, as long as they are not roaming on a "foreign" network. The down side of course is calling our cell phones is more expensive than calling a landline.

Here in the UK most people by far prefer our method and I suspect that preference is expressed by people on the European continent too, but I am interested to hear arguments in favour of the North American system.

In article you write:

Wouldn't it be easier to look at the price list on their web site?

R's, John

Short answer: people like what they're used to, and tend to consider the alternative to be an abomination against nature.

Mobile pays has the advantage for the mobile user that it's very cheap to have a phone for occasional use (I have a UK phone into which I load £5 twice a year), and you get to foist off a lot of the cost on your friends.

Here in North America, due to our fixed length numbering system, there weren't enough unused area codes to provide a separate numbering space for mobiles, so the numbers are integrated into the same numbering space as landlines. (Please save the fixed vs. variable length number argument for later.) That meant that there was really no alternative to mobile pays, since a system where some calls cost extra and you couldn't easily tell which were which from the phone numbers would be a disaster. There were a few attempts to do caller pays mobile with special exchange codes, all of which failed, since it turned out that the number of people who thought they were important enough that people would pay extra to call them greatly exceeded the number who actually were.

Also, the US and Canada are much larger in area than European countries, and when mobile phones were new in the 1980s, mobile users paid domestic long distance charges just like landline users, as well as roaming charges using the phone away from home within the country. (That was also due to the decision in the US to divide up the country into several hundred service areas and to hand out separate licenses for each.) These days, US mobile carriers treat all calls within the US as local, but Canadian carriers still charge long distance unless you get an add-on package.

So anyway, the biggest advantage of mobile pays is that there is actual price competition for all mobile calls, not just outgoing ones. As a result, US phone users use a lot more minutes than European ones, and particularly for heavy users, the rates are quite low. Even for us low-volume prepaid users, it's not hard to find rates of 10¢/min and no monthly fee. My UK prepaid is about three times that.

Another advantage is that we can port numbers not just between mobile carriers, but between landline and mobile. If you decide to ditch your landline in favor of mobile, you can take your number with you, and if you change your mind, you can take your number back. You'll never see that in caller pays countries.

R's, John

:Can I expand this into a discussion of the relative merits of the US and :Canadian cell phone models where the receiving party pays, verses the :almost-rest-of-the-world model where the originating party pays, as long :as they are not roaming on a "foreign" network. The down side of course :is calling our cell phones is more expensive than calling a landline.

:Here in the UK most people by far prefer our method and I suspect that :preference is expressed by people on the European continent too, but I am :interested to hear arguments in favour of the North American system.

The basic problem with calling party pays is that calling party has no idea what, exactly, it'll cost him until he gets his bill, and it provides an incentive for people expecting to receive more calls than they make (like, say, plumbers, electricians, drug dealers) to pick a plan that carries abnormally high calling party fees, with low fees to him.

Called party pays encourages the cell phone owner to pick the cheapest plan, and has better competitive results, with lower fees for everyone as a result.

** Moderator Note: Of course, a downside to 'mobile owner pays' is that 'other people' can spend the owner's money, without the owner having any say in the matter.

Here, calling party fees are not determined by the contract or plan the user chooses, it is the originating carrier that determines these. As the termination fees vary depending on which mobile network the called phone is using, some originating carriers pass on this differential to the caller. There was a time when a savvy user could know which network they were calling by looking at the number (All UK cell phones have non geographic area codes) but because of number porting between networks it is no longer possible to determine the network with certainty. Having said that, this hasn't become an issue with the general public, few are even aware of it.

In any case when I call a cellphone from home I use a VoIP provider that charges 5 US cents per min irrespective of which UK network I call, so go figure.

In the UK you can buy a basic cellphone for $10 and that includes some pre-pay credit. You could then use it to receive incoming calls only, at no cost to you. You would just need to make a single call or SMS every

3 months to keep the SIM active.

What I would like to ask is this, why does it have to be either/or, why can't both systems be offered as alternative plans? Is there something fundamentally different about our systems or cultures that would preclude this? One benefits the caller, the other the callee.

Thanks for the interesting insight John.

The differences are as much cultural than anything else. Here in the UK companies like to use non geographic numbers which cost more for their customers to dial than regular area codes. They do this for various reasons such as revenue share, and to have a "national" perception. There is a new range of non geographic numbers that cost the same to dial as a regular area codes but they are not so popular.

Of course in the US these companies would be using 800 numbers to service their customers, but "service" is still a developing concept over here as you will have discovered.

You always have the option of not answering the phone. (I realize there are people who are believe that they can't do that, but trust me, it's possible.)

Back when mobile phones were new, US users would get all worked up about incoming calls, not list their numbers, and tell people never ever to call them unless it was really REALLY important. Now most users have minute bundles, so they don't care. I only object to incoming calls on my mobile when it's a junk call, same as I object to them on my home phone.

R's, John

I suppose European systems could add mobile pays numbers if there were some demand since they can add new number ranges, but in North America, we don't have number space to waste on them. Anyway, the few experiments carriers have tried have shown no demand for caller pays.

We do have some number ranges for calls that cost the caller extra, the 1-500 and 1-900 ranges. Ask anyone in the US how likely they'd be to call a mobile with a 500 or 900 number.

R's, John

heh-heh ... you *think* that's an option, John, but really, an unanswered call will just transfer to your voice mail box (unless you've succeeded in turning off forward-to-voice-mail on no-answer), costing you *both* the minutes the incoming call is active *and* the minutes for the new outgoing (nominally from your handset) call to the voicemail box.

(That's how come answering an inbound call, while roaming abroad, and instantly hanging up again cost me half what not answering it did.)

But, yes, de-activate forward-to-voice-mail (easier said than done, BTW, at least with T-Mobile), and "the option of not answering the phone" is a viable one.

Cheers, -- tlvp

Are you sure about that? I didn't think minutes got used up when someone is leaving a voice mail.

It wouldn't make sense, for several reasons. The call isn't actually being transmitted over a cell tower. And the recipient would have no control over the length of the call -- a malicious person could use up someone else's minutes by leaving very long messages over and over again.

Jimmy

***** Moderator's Note *****

The poster's From address goes to a service which offers "throwaway" email addresses. Jimmy might not see email sent to it in the future.

Bill Horne Moderator

Have you *ever* heard of someone listing their cell number in the phone book? If it's even possible, it would be an add-on service that costs extra.

Jimmy

I don't believe my Verizon cell phone charges me any minutes when a call is forwarded to voice mail.

For myself, whenever possible, I access my voice mail from a landline, not my cell phone. I do this (a) not to use up minutes, and (b) because it's easier to work the menu from a conventional desk phone than my cell phone.

Jimmy wrote: :tlvp wrote: :> an unanswered call will just transfer to your voice mail box (unless :> you've succeeded in turning off forward-to-voice-mail on no-answer), :> costing you *both* the minutes the incoming call is active *and* :> the minutes for the new outgoing (nominally from your handset) :> call to the voicemail box.

:Are you sure about that? I didn't think minutes got used up when :someone is leaving a voice mail.

:It wouldn't make sense, for several reasons. The call isn't actually :being transmitted over a cell tower. And the recipient would have no

Why would that matter to the cell phone company? Their purpose is to bill customers, not to provide service. Charging for not providing a service is right in line with their current practices. However, I'm not sure if anyone still charges for leaving messages or not. It used to be common, ten years and more ago, but abuse issues were a problem. AT&T no longer charges for retreiving messages from your handset (well, they bill them as mobile-to-mobile, which are generally free, unless you're roaming.) Verizon seems to, at least most of the time. (There are inconsistencies in their billing practices.) I don't know what other company's practices are.

As others have pointed out, incoming calls to voice mail usually don't cost minutes. I have a 100-minute monthly allowance, with no free nights/weekends, and no free mobile to mobile, and I have never been charged minutes when people leave voice mail. If you're being charged for incoming voice mail messages, you're probably in a very small minority.

I used to get charged for minutes when I called voice mail from my mobile to retrieve messages. As others have pointed out, retrieving messages from a landline is one way around that. Now that I have an iPhone, I don't even have to worry about that. Retrieving voice mail uses my unlimited data bytes, not my very limited voice minutes.

Yep. Protested it numerous times with T-Mobile billing support. No dice.

Used up? Maybe not. But billed? If you're roaming abroad? Yes. At least by T-Mobile (USA). And by at least one Swiss cell phone outfit a decade ago, who advised their customers to turn off forwarding-to-voice-mail if planning to go abroad (so as to curtail just that expense).

All irrelevant. The ring signal for the call is being forwarded to the roaming carrier for transmission to my roaming handset; the no-answer-after-five-rings signal is being forwarded back to T-Mobile *from* the roaming carrier; T-Mobile is then requesting the roaming carrier to forward the call -- now on the roaming carrier's network -- to my T-Mo voicemail area; lots of lovely international-LD billable events there :-) .

As for "leaving very long messages," no, T-Mo cuts messages off at the 1-minute point. And as for victimizing the callee, it'd be enough to switch off the phone, for none of the roaming behavior to get triggered in the first place: if the phone's not registered with any carrier -- neither T-Mo nor any roaming partner -- then only standard domestic-tarriffed voicemail forwarding applies, and (with T-Mo, anyway) that's at zero incremental cost to the subscriber.

Cheers, -- tlvp

I can turn Call Forwarding off in my handset. T-Mobile ignores it.

I will point out that with the plan I'm on, I have 500 minutes of call forwarding (transfers to voice mail or other numbers) available each billing cycle. If I use that up, it's charged to my whenever minutes or overage minutes. It's difficult to use up.

It sure would be nice to be able to dump a call with extreme prejudice.

***** Moderator's Note *****

Google Voice.

Bill Horne Moderator