I’m really surprised it’s tolerated in the USA, given that there’s a significant element of lost control (you can’t control the number and source of incoming calls and texts) - I thought it was us Brits that tended to let ourselves get shafted.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that you can choose who you give your number to. I’ve yet to get a telemarketer call on my cellphone, and I’ve had one for about 5 years. I rarely if ever get calls from people I haven’t given my number to.
With the size of plan I have (1600 daytime minutes split between 4 people, two of whom [my parents] rarely use theirs) it’s simply not an issue. I’m at work all day, so there’s basically only 20 hours a week I would be using my cell phone anyway. I’m on Verizon, as are alot of my friends. Those calls are “free”, they don’t use any minutes.
To me, it makes no difference if my buddy calls me or if I call him. We’re still going to talk for the same ammount of time (usually under a minute). If I’m calling a friend from out of town, or if I know we’re going to be on the phone for awhile, the only way it matters is if it would be long distance from their land line. If it is, I’ll call them. If they have a cell phone too, it doesn’t matter.
I’d say “paying”, as in, using minutes for incomming calls, is more than made up for by not having to pay long distance when calling in the 48.
Count me as another who’s amazed that people put up with this. In Japan (where the total number of cell phone subscribers just passed 100 million out of a population of under 130 million), you only pay for the calls and messages you send out, not for anything coming in or just going on in your phone (TV, GPS, MP3s, photos, games, etc, although depending on your plan there may be a flat fee for just having them available).
Phones can be around US$50 - $500, although many providers will give you a decent unit free or steeply discounted if you switch to them. Calling plans are a little more expensive, with the no-frills, I-don’t-wanna-talk plans running about $20-$40 a month. An even cheaper alternative is a pre-paid phone, where you buy your minutes before you call. As far as I know, you don’t pay anything for the service (maybe Cerowyn can confirm or deny this, as he’s used this plan when he’s in Japan), don’t pay anything for incoming calls, and only get charged for outgoing messages. In theory, you could talk to people calling you all year and not pay a thing beyond the initial purchase.
It’s based on the history of the telephone system in the US.
Back in the days of the Bell System, when Ma Bell had an effective monopoly on telephone service in the US, the billing system was designed for “caller pays”. When MTS (mobile telephone service) and IMTS (improved mobile telephone service) were added to the network, before the invention of cellular service, they did it by routing selected blocks of ordinary telephone numbers to a mobile operator. The mobile operator setup and monitored the connection between the wireline telephone system and the mobile subscriber. The caller (wireline) paid the normal charges for a telephone call to the mobile operator. The callee (wireless) paid setup and airtime charges for the wireless segment of the connection. This meant that the wireline billing system did not have to be modified to support calls to mobile subscribers. Mobile subscribers always paid for the setup and airtime charges on their calls, regardless of who originated the call. This was considered to be fair. Mobile phone service was very expensive. Why should the wireline subscriber get hit with a big bill for a call because the callee had a mobile telephone? The people who were rich enough to have a mobile telephone also paid for the costs of the service. When cellular service was introduced, they kept the same billing scheme. Wireline callers were only charged for the wireline segment of the call, and cellular subscribers were responsible for all the costs of the cellular system that connected them to the wireline network. Unlike many other countries, there was no easy way for a wireline subscriber to know that he was calling a number associated with a mobile or cellular telephone. Even with all the technical advances since the introduction of analog cellular service, the argument is still valid. Why should a wireline subscriber have to pay for the expensive cellular network used to provide service to cellular subscribers?
I briefly had a job as a mobile telephone service operator when I was a teenager.
That answer is easy. Don’t use them. It’s that simple. You are paying them for a service. If you don’t like the terms don’t sign up. Now if you decide that having that phone/service is important, then the cellphone service providers, like any other business, gets to set their own terms of business and cost. You, as the consumer, gets to decide if you will pay for that product.
It’s a lot like the restaurants that keep the cost of their meals down, by charging $2 for a glass of Coke. I can pay for the Coke, I can not order the Coke, or I can not eat at that restaurant.
You can pay for the incoming call, you can not answer incoming calls, or you can not sign up for the service.
Hmm. Seems remarkably easy - except my question is how is it allowed to continue in an environment where the rest of the world doesn’t pay for incoming calls? I know the other countries can’t compete with us, I’m just surprised there hasn’t been more of a demand - and where there is a demand, there usually comes a company that fills that nice and supplies.
I guess my question is - why doesn’t some company take the initiative and offer this option of not paying for incoming calls. Wouldn’t they get a lot of business?
Who is going to pay for the call? Somebody has to pay.
The current billing system for wireline telephones does not distinguish between calling a wireline subscriber and a cellular subscriber. Both calls cost the same to the caller.
Switching to the European system would require major changes, both technically and legally, to the telephone system.
I have a 4 band GSM phone that I bought unlocked (nobody even sells locked phones) at a mall in the Mid East. I’ve had service in New Zealand, Oz, The Gulf, Africa, Europe and SE Asia as well as the US all on the same phone with differnt SIMs installed. Only in the US do I pay for incomming calls… and yes it is completely stupid. In a few countries local calls are free so if someone called my mobile phone from a landline, then the mobile operator eats the cost of the call, but there are enough outgoing calls thatit all works out. The US is like a 3rd world country when it comes to mobile technology… even Rwanda has a more logical system.
Don’t you have overpriced support hotlines, phone sex chats, horoscopes and many other wonderful phone-based services like we do in Europe? As long as the system can assign a price to some number prefix, it should work. Our cell phone use special “area” codes originally based on providers. Of course that would be different from the current American system but I find it hard to imagine that it is impossible.
It’s a matter of habit. To me, the US system makes a lot more sense, the phones available tend to be better than Japan (although crappier than Europe sometimes), and the coverage is very good for such a huge country. As for incoming calls, I don’t think it’s any of your damn business if the phone # I am giving you is a cellular number. “Cellular” is not an area, so it should not have a separate area code. My cell phone has a local area code, attached to a particular geographical area that I am from. In an ideal world I will pay for my usage of the cellular network to connect me to the phone network as transparently as if I’m in my house, and nobody in the phone network should be able to give a rat’s ass if I’m using cellular, landline, satelite or I’m actually going through a TTY operator.
It might make sense to offer free incoming calls at a fixed fee, but charging callers is the ridiculous 3rd world left-over that other countries need to get over, not something that US needs to sink to.
It would probably come down to this.
Now, AT&T will offer you 500 min/month, unlimited long distance for $40/month. But incoming calls count toward your minutes.
They COULD offer you 300 min/month, unlimited long distance for $40/month, and not charge you for incoming calls.
That may result in the exact same thing, in the end. But consumers are only going to look at the number of minutes and not figure in the advantage of not being charged for incoming calls. So which phone company is going to be the first one to (seemingly) reduce their minutes, while charging the same amount.
Ok, then charge the receivers and nto the callers. It’s the idea of charging both that offends me.
You pay for airtime. If the caller happens to be on a cell phone from Verizon calling my cell phone on T-Mobile, who is going to pay for his Verizon air time? If you call my cell phone from a landline it’s as free as any other local call.
It wouldn’t be impossible, just incredibly expensive and disruptive. Every cellular number would have to be changed. Telephone switch software would have to be rewritten, which is very expensive to do. Existing communications regulations and contracts would have to be changed. It would be a real mess.
There would be side effects. Many business telephone systems are programmed to block all calls to “premium” area codes and exchanges. A cellular telephone number would have a negative value. Why should I call your cellular number if it is going to cost me a substantial amount of money as compared to an ordinary local call? My current calling plan charges me 10¢ per call for local calls of unlimited duration.
‘Incredibly’ expensive? I’d like to see how that really would break down. Changing telephone numbers hasn’t proven to be that big a hassle in countries that have done it (for example, every single London landline number has had three changes in the past twenty or so years).
We’re talking about a separate set of codes which specifically identify the phone as a mobile one, not bundling it in with premium rates. Sure, an exchange could be set up to block these, too. But only if the operator of it decides to do so.
Because in this system, you’re making an informed decision to make a call which uses the more expensive cellular network.
Being a cheap bastard, my informed decision is going to be not making that call unless I’m provided a landline number.