My first thread; apologies if I do something wrong.
Is there a rationale behind charging a higher rate to a cell phone rather than a landline?
my father recently found out that TimeWarner doesn’t include calls made to cell phones in their ‘one-rate international calling plan’; charging $.50 per minute to calls made to cell phones from my father’s house phone.
Not being terribly informed about telephone companies, this is the first I heard of it. Local or long distance but not international calls are all billed the same, landline or no; as far as I know. Google has, alas, provided no answer. Clearly, they can charge whatever they like; but is there an actual reason why they would?
In the US, usually the owner of the cell phone pays for all incoming calls, whereas the owner of land line does not pay for incoming calls. This is not the case in some other countries. In those places, you never pay for any incoming calls, whether you own a land line or a mobile. Instead, the person initiating the call is responsible for the extra charges, thus calls to land line and mobile are charged at different rates in those countries. This is likely what is being reflected in your calling plan.
hum, so in the US, I pay for both the calls I make and the calls I receive on my cellphone – but in certain countries I would only pay for the calls I make , and not the ones I receive?
Consider me educated, thanks for the answer^^;
Any way to find out what the rule is in what country?
You’ll probably just have to look up the rates for each country in your calling plan individually to find out. This is fairly common around world, but not completely universal either.
That depends. In a normal situation the caller pays, but if you are abroad you pay for the radio traffic from the border of your country to where your telephone happens to be on the grounds that the caller doesn’t know where you are and shouldn’t be charged extra. Likewise, once you are abroad the system knows where you are, so even if your mobile is switched off you have to pay for traffic trying to reach you.
I believe that charging only applies if you answer calls. Also, if the phone is switched off, then the “system” doesn’t know where you are.
Incidentally, Telecom NZ charges different international rates for calls to mobiles in some countries but not others. I believe it depends on whether they can determine if you are calling a mobile phone or not. See this list. Note that the US is not included. From personal knowledge, I know that a number of the countries on the list have special area codes for mobile phones. Is that not the case in the US?
For more than you probably want to know about this look at the Wiki article on Roaming. Roaming is the term they use for connecting mobile phones outside their home “area”.
Correct, no special area codes in the US. In general though, the first 3 digits of the 7 digits number is the code of the telephone exchange, and that code might give an indication of whether it is a landline or a mobile if you look it up. However, in recent years, there are some portability schemes that let you keep the same number even between different carriers, so that has muddied the water a little bit.
Even before portability, there was no distinction. Some carriers may have tended to use certain area codes for mobile numbers but there was never a clear scheme. Zillions of mobile phone numbers have been issued using the same area codes as landline numbers.
ETA: In Egypt (and maybe other countries too), you have to dial a 0 first when dialing a mobile phone, so you know that you are dialing a mobile phone and are going to get charged for it, similar to how you dial 1 first for long distance in the US.
Note that I was not talking about the area code, but the exchange code. That is the 3 digits that come after the area code. If I understand correctly, before portability, it was very unlikely for landline and mobile numbers to be on the same exchange, because they typically have infrastructures owned by different carriers, and the call had to be physically routed to different central offices. By looking up the owner of the exchange, you could get a pretty good idea of what kind of number it was.
When you call a cell phone, there are certain charges that the cell phone provider charges. In the U.S., those charges are paid by the cell phone owner. In other countries, this has been ruled illegal, so the cell phone companies charge the caller. If you are on a land line in Europe, and you call a cell phone.
Originally, in most countries, it was done like it was in the U.S.: Owner pays for both incoming and outgoing calls, but most countries banned the practice. This was back in the days when people had 60 minute plans, and cell phone owners were upset that unwanted incoming calls were wasting their minutes.
This wasn’t done in the U.S. because most people in the U.S. have access to land lines and could easily get multiple land lines if they so desire. Cell phones were thought of as a convenience to businessmen who could afford them. Cell phones were an unneeded luxury, so there was no reason for the government to stop this practice.
However, in most other countries, land lines weren’t as common and ordering them was more difficult. Even in the 1990s in England and France, it could take months to get your phone. However in almost any country, you could get cellphone service that very day. Therefore, more people simply stopped getting a land line and used cellphones as their main phone. This put pressure on the government to stop the practice of the owner paying for incoming calls and put the charges to the caller.
Now, with minutes measured by the hundreds, free weekends, and even unlimited calling, the pressure to stop the practice in the U.S. to charge the owner even for incoming calls simply isn’t there. I have 800 minutes per month, and I rarely use more than 650.
Things are a changing. Cell phones put pressure on the land line business to stop charging long distance fees. I got my first cell phone, so I could call my family since I had free night minutes. My long distance bill went from over $100/month to zero.
Companies like Skype are now putting pressure on phone companies to stop charging for international calls. The day is near when all calls are free.
There was a case not too long ago when somebody complained about a huge bill when he had been abroad. The answer he got was that once he had switched the phone on his home provider got a signal where he was so every time when somebody tried to call him the call was immediately relayed to where he had last showed where he was. It didn’t matter at all if the phone was on or not or if he chose not to answer.