Yes, we pay for incoming mobile calls because the cellphone numbers are mixed in with the landline numbers instead of being in a separate area code. From the caller’s point of view, they can’t tell whether the destination number is a mobile number or not, so there’s no way of telling whether the caller should be charged extra. So the recipient pays extra for the airtime, convenience, etc, and the caller pays the same rate that he or she would pay for calling any other number at the same location.
(Oh yes, because the mobile numbers are mixed in with the landline numbers, each mobile number is considered to have a home location, which affects the cost of calling it, and also the cost of receiving the call. If the mobile user is away from the home location, he or she may pay additional charges to have the call forwarded to the current location.)
Before ‘number portability’, mobile numbers were at least in their own “exchanges” (the middle three digits of a ten-digit NANP phone number 555-555-5555), but now even that’s not an indication. I could take my landline number and port it to a new cellphone account tomorrow.
You have to look at the history of the telephone system in the USA and how it differed from the systems in Europe and other places. Traditionally, landline calls are “caller pays”. When mobile (not cellular) phones were developed, they were connected to the wireline network via base stations that used ordinary phone numbers for their network connection. If a landline subscriber called a mobile subscriber, the landline subscriber paid the normal rates for a call to the area where the base station was located. The mobile subscriber paid for airtime and the services of the company that provided the mobile telephone service. This fit in nicely with the existing telephone network and billing systems. The mobile subscriber bore all the costs of the radio system, which were substantial. The landline subscriber didn’t get surprised with a large bill for a call to a number that was indistinguishable from an ordinary landline number. The USA doesn’t use the meter system that is common in many countries, where call costs can vary considerably based on where the call terminates. Local calls are usually free or cheap in the USA. Rates vary on the area called. The rates are roughly correlated with distance. They do not vary based on whether the call is to a landline or mobile subscriber. As far as the telephone company is concerned, a call to Baltimore is a call to Baltimore. They don’t care what is attached to the phone line on the other end, which may be an ordinary telephone or a sophisticated mobile telephone switching system. When cellular service was introduced, it followed the same model. The wireline customer paid for the charges, if any, associated with the wireline network. The cellular customer paid for all the charges associated with the cellular network. Nobody had to redesign their networks or billing systems. Call costs remained predictable, and low, for the wireline customer. People who were well off enough to have a cellular phone paid for the convenience and capabilities of the service. Why should a wireline customer subsidize the cellular customer via high rates for calling a number associated with a cellular phone? This also was compatible with the business model of multiple independent companies providing either wireline or cellular service. Each company managed and billed for their own network.
Here, too. I have a friend whose former boyfriend was stalking the hell out of her. He would send her (quite literally) several hundred text messages a day. One time she let me look at her phone and he had averaged over one per minute for a five-hour period!
Not only did the cell phone company refuse to let her off the hook for this, they wouldn’t even let her block the phone number he called from!
Traditional land lines the caller pays the recipient does not. VOIP which is increasingly common as people get phone service through their cable provider there is no line charge for any calls to or from to anywhere in the US and Canada. $ 25 a month flat fee, period.
This one is hurting the land-line companies quite a bit. Every land-line plan I’ve known of charges only the caller for long distance calls. A large percentage of cellphone plans now offer free long distance calling, inside the contiguous 48 states. So lots of people I know only place long distance calls on their cell phones.
Slightly off topic - in the US, long distance can be a rather short distance. At my last house, everything outside about 8 miles was long distance. I pretty much only called out on the land line to order pizza.
I used to be on the “European” model when I lived in South Africa, and now I am on the American one.
I used to have the same impression of the American model as many posters here due, namely “why should I have to pay for an incoming call?”, but I’ve grown to prefer the American system (and thanks mks57 for the historic reasoning for it).
The American model and phone numbers where you cannot distinguish between land and cellular lines tend to go hand in hand. It would be unfair to charge the caller a different rate when they couldn’t tell what type of phone they were calling. Given the huge number of people that now use a cellular phone as their primary phone this strikes me as a lot more flexible. There is no concern about which one of your friends are more expensive to call.
I have a pay-as-you-go phone and I certainly get charged for calls I receive. And the do-not-call list may lessen the number of junk calls you get but it doesn’t eliminate them. A couple weeks I got a fax call. I hung up and five minutes later it was repeated. All I could do was turn the phone off.
What ever about prices I’m not too sure if I could get used to a system where by I didn’t know if it was a land line or a cell I was calling? If someone gives me their number, be it personal or professional, one glance at it and I can tell if it’s land line or cell (I can do this for Ireland, UK, France and Spain).
How does knowing if it’s landline or cell tell you if it’s personal or professional? I know people who use both a cell phone and a land line as their professional lines, and the same is true for personal lines.
… it just seems that way.
I think this is one of those great cultural divides where “the other way” seems utterly insane, whichever side you grew up on. The idea of having to pay for a phone call that someone else makes to me just seems totally ridiculous as well as being open to abuse.
One question: I gather from this thread that cell phones in the USA do not have “cell only” area codes. How does that work? When you buy a cell phone, is the number assigned to the area code in which you live? Or the area code where the cell company is based, or the area code where the phone was bought, or what?
Here in the UK, mobile numbers start 077, 078 or 079, so you instantly know if you are calling one. (Geographical numbers start 01 or 02.)
When you sign up, they ask you, “Where would you like the number to be based?”. The phone company has numbers available in most locations that they offer service (except the really rural areas, I suppose). You select a locality. People usually choose the largest city that is local to where they will use the phone the most often.
For instance, I live in Toronto and my phone has a Toronto number (area code 416 or 647). My friend in Vancouver would have a Vancouver number (one of certain specific exchange codes in area code 604 or 778). People in the suburbs of Toronto would have numbers in the 289 or 905 area codes–but if they’re local to Toronto, they might as well choose a 416 or 647 number, because that gives them access to the largest local area.
The number is assigned to the area in which you live. I used to live in Atlanta, so my area code was 404 for my cellular phone. If I had a land line it probably would have had the same area code.
I now live in California, but have no plans to change my number, so I will continue to have a Atlanta area code here in Sacramento. In fact, when I signed up for a VOIP home phone, I got to choose an Atlanta area code too, since I am working from home for an Atlanta company that will forward my calls.
The caller pays the same rates no matter what kind of number he or she is calling. If the number happens to belong to a mobile phone, the owner of the phone may pay per-minute airtime charges (if the call is not covered by airtime minutes that have already been paid for), or per-minute long-distance charges (if the mobile is away from its home location to which the number is assigned, and the call is not covered by some kind of long-distance plan). But this varies according to what company and options the mobile owner has chosen, and there is absolutely no way the caller can tell.
ALL 800 numbers (formerly called inward WATS) are paid for by the recipient – that’s the whole point, to make the call free for the originator. The only thing that saves it from abuse is that the caller cannot block the CID.
Before number portability, telephone companies were assigned blocks of 1000 numbers at a time, and they could only give you a number in those blocks.
This is still the way it seems to work, as most people assume that they will get a certain prefix from the cellphone provider. They just don’t know that they can request any prefix in the area. And to make matters worse, some of the phone companies are refusing to port over numbers (I understand the FCC makes portability allowable, but not mandatory.) The phone companies simply wish the flexibility would go away, and they don’t tell people about it.
I once had a landline from provider #1 ported to provider #2, then 24 hours later ported to provider #3 (cell) because #1 refused to port directly to #3.
Unfortunately, since most people have never seen my prefix on a cellphone, I always get asked, “You sure that’s a cell number? It can’t be!” when I give it out.
What’s that got to do with the future price of pork bellies? Toll-free numbers exist in all other countries too. We are talking about, when calling a cell phone, whether the caller or the receiver should pay for the wireless segment of the call.
