Advice for calling US Mobile Phone?

Ivor Jones <[email protected]> wrote:

> "chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:1gxh46a.ojo6fc13eqhisN%[email protected]...
> > Steven M. Scharf <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > []
> >> It's irrelevant how people use their phones, both calls to and from
> >> mobiles,
> >> from and to landlines, because how they use them is highly influenced
> >> by the
> >> way the tariffs are set up. Just in this thread, we've seen many posts
> >> about
> >> how people avoid calling mobiles from landlines whenever possible, due
> >> to
> >> the termination charges.
> >
> > True- it's surely not irrelevant how people use their phones, because
> > the issue at hand is how much people pay for their calls. So, if someone
> > has a mobile with inclusive minutes to other mobiles, then the cost
> > isn't the same factor.
>
> It is in a way, because people will, consciously or unconsciously, tailor
> their phone usage to fit the tariff they're using.

Indeed, but it's still the case that that kind of consumer will be
calling mobiles and not worrying about the cost as much as someone on,
say, a PAYG plan calling cross network.

> When I was on pay as
> you go, I made hardly any calls on it, using mainly the landline. Now I
> have a contract with hundreds of inclusive minutes, I make almost all my
> calls on the mobile. I use the normal landline hardly at all, but I use
> VoIP to call other people also on it, for free.

It's highly likely that if Orange dump the plan I'm currently on, I may
very well just go on to PAYG. I'm considering it with my partner's
account. The whole reason I got onto contract in the first place was
because it offered lower roaming costs. Now, you have companies which
offer far better deals (Riiing), or similar costs on PAYG (thinking
Easymobile for example) and it seems less attractive.

--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.net
usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk

---

› See More: Advice for calling US Mobile Phone?

"chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:1gxhhfm.hzg4dvlwh1cbN%[email protected]...
> Ototin <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 10:44:46 +0100, [email protected]
>> (chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >You can usually figure out the costs of calls if you delve deep enough
>> >into the web sites, but of more interest to me would be how people use
>> >their phones. If someone has 1,000 minutes on a plan, but only
>> >averages
>> >using 500 of them, then it doesn't make sense to divide the plan's
>> >cost
>> >by a 1,000 to get the per minute cost.
>>
>> So, for the sake of comparison assume that the 1,000 minutes is used
>> up. And also assumed a usage during a specific time period, for
>> example, from 07:00 to 20:00 everyday.
>
> I'd bother doing so if I thought that most mobile users were using their
> phone between 0700 and 2000 and using a 1,000 minutes a month.

I struggle to use 120 minutes a month..!

Ivor

"chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:1gxhhi8.1eems3a1ikskjcN%[email protected]...

[snip]

> It's highly likely that if Orange dump the plan I'm currently on, I may
> very well just go on to PAYG. I'm considering it with my partner's
> account. The whole reason I got onto contract in the first place was
> because it offered lower roaming costs. Now, you have companies which
> offer far better deals (Riiing), or similar costs on PAYG (thinking
> Easymobile for example) and it seems less attractive.

You're entirely correct. One of the main reasons I hang on to my contract
is it's the only way of having Line 2. I need this as I don't want to give
my main number to work.

Ivor

"Ivor Jones" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:1gxhhfm.hzg4dvlwh1cbN%[email protected]...
> > Ototin <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 10:44:46 +0100, [email protected]
> >> (chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco)
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >You can usually figure out the costs of calls if you delve deep enough
> >> >into the web sites, but of more interest to me would be how people use
> >> >their phones. If someone has 1,000 minutes on a plan, but only
> >> >averages
> >> >using 500 of them, then it doesn't make sense to divide the plan's
> >> >cost
> >> >by a 1,000 to get the per minute cost.
> >>
> >> So, for the sake of comparison assume that the 1,000 minutes is used
> >> up. And also assumed a usage during a specific time period, for
> >> example, from 07:00 to 20:00 everyday.
> >
> > I'd bother doing so if I thought that most mobile users were using their
> > phone between 0700 and 2000 and using a 1,000 minutes a month.
>
> I struggle to use 120 minutes a month..!

I use about 100 peak minutes a month, so my 300 minutes per month plan is a
bit wasteful, but it's the smallest plan I could get. It's around $32/month.

But where most people really rack up the minutes is nights and weekends, and
on-network mobile-mobile. It would normally cost $0.06/minute to make a
landline call from my house in Silicon Valley, to San Francisco, a mere 40
miles away. My wife's family all lives up there, and we were paying about
$20 per month in "local long-distance." Similarly, calling anywhere in the
U.S. will cost about $0.025/minute on the least expensive long distance
calling card, and we probably use another couple of hundred minutes on the
mobile phone, that would otherwise cost another $5. Since Verizon has a very
high market share in my area (GSM coverage is very poor in my area), nearly
every friend, relative, or colleague has Verizon service, and you can rack
up another couple of hundred free peak minutes that way.

It doesn't really matter how you slice it, CPP always results in higher
per-minute rates, the question is whether it's 1.3x, 1.5x, 2x, or 3x.

"Osmo R" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> Itr sure is not irrelevant. The price comparisons should of course be
> based on the real use of phones, not some imaginary use. If people
> seldom do call mobiles from landlines then I do not see how that should
> be included in the comparison.

Because if the termination charges were not so high, they would not be
intentionally avoiding making certain calls. I wanted people to look at the
big picture, and not just look at how the wireless carriers have conditioned
them to behave.

> The problem with this is that by choosing the pattern one can choose the
> result. The idea of taking costs to all parties into question is just
> meaningless. I do not care what it costs to other parties (within
> reasonable limits).

That is what the carriers want. They can successfully hide the true cost,
when people think only about themselves.

"Osmo R" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news[email protected]...
> Miguel Cruz wrote:
> > Osmo R <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >>There is no need to convince that incoming calls are free. That is
> >>assumed here. People have never paid for incoming calls. In fact people
> >>complain when they have to pay for incoming calls when they roam. Please
> >>do not project your views to us. Nobody would want to pay for receiving
> >>calls here.
> >
> >
> > They might if they knew it would result in the cost of their outgoing
calls
> > dropping to half or less.
>
> They do not. I surely do not.

It depends on the laws in each country, and if collusion is legal or not. In
a free market, the total cost per call would fall dramatically with mobile
party pays, because the cost becomes transparent (in the UK sense of the
word!).

All studies on the issue of CPP/RPP/MPP show that the cost falls with MPP.

Steven M. Scharf wrote:
>
>
> I use about 100 peak minutes a month, so my 300 minutes per month
> plan is a bit wasteful, but it's the smallest plan I could get. It's
> around $32/month.

I would never consider using so much for a mobile phone. So what's
cheap and what's expensive is relative. Since early 2003 I have used on
the average two euros a month for phone bills. Average use of airtime
has been 144 minutes a month. (counted from the phone logs).

Osmo

"chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
<[email protected]> wrote in

> I'm not without my criticisms of the UK mobile market, but I've not seen
> anything here which makes me think it's the 'caller pays' system which
> contributes to it.

The competive environment is about the same between the U.S. and U.K., with
four major carriers. The prices are largely set by the premier carrier,
Verizon, with the other three carriers trying to offer better deals in
terms of included minutes, or features such as rollover minutes (Cingular),
automatic tier pricing (Sprint), or huge numbers of included minutes
(T-Mobile).

What makes the MPP (Mobile Party Pays) more competitive is that the prices
are transparent. All the studies of European pricing conclude this.

"The crucial issue from the point of competition policy (as Oftel the UK
regulator emphasises) is that there are no market forces working to bring
the termination charge (around 20p) down. This is because the person
receiving the call does not pay for it even though he or she chooses the
network that levies the termination charge."

There have been studies in the U.S., as carriers wanted to provide a caller
pays option, but without any FCC regulation on termination charges. The FCC
was willing to allow caller pays, but only if it could regulate the
termination charges. So the whole thing went nowhere.

You've already seen that the UK wireless carriers will charge excessive
termination charges in the abscence of government regulation, and even now
these charges remain very high.

Here are some more papers on the issue:

http://www.c-t-u.org/HNI/P.%20CTU%20...%20%20TSTT.ppt (see page 22)


http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/presentat...Aug,%20FMI.PPT (see page
7)


The conclusion is always the same. Caller pays causes a failure in market
pricing. Just because you choose not to see it, does not change the reality
that it is happening.

Steven M. Scharf wrote:
> "Osmo R" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>>Itr sure is not irrelevant. The price comparisons should of course be
>>based on the real use of phones, not some imaginary use. If people
>>seldom do call mobiles from landlines then I do not see how that should
>>be included in the comparison.
>
>
> Because if the termination charges were not so high, they would not be
> intentionally avoiding making certain calls. I wanted people to look at the
> big picture, and not just look at how the wireless carriers have conditioned
> them to behave.

And I still do not see why the cost of calling a mobile from a a
landline is relevant when one can call with a mobile.

>>The problem with this is that by choosing the pattern one can choose the
>>result. The idea of taking costs to all parties into question is just
>>meaningless. I do not care what it costs to other parties (within
>>reasonable limits).
>
>
> That is what the carriers want. They can successfully hide the true cost,
> when people think only about themselves.

So? I do not care of the carriers. I care what it costs to me.

Osmo

"chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
<[email protected]> wrote in

> Fair enough, but it's not as if Osmo's calling pattern is that unusual.
> There's a good reason that offpeak kicks in at 6, 7 or 9pm of whatever
> it is in someone's local market. Most people want or need to make calls
> in peak time- that's why it's more expensive to call then. The companies
> don't give their customers 'free' offpeak minutes because they like
> them.

Some GSM carriers in some areas of the U.S. are very capacity constrained,
and try to encourage less peak use, and more off-peak use. The business
customers that are paying for thousands of peak minutes per month, do not
want dropped calls, or "system busy, please try later" messages.

Steven M. Scharf wrote:
> "Osmo R" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news[email protected]...
>
>>Miguel Cruz wrote:
>>
>>>Osmo R <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>There is no need to convince that incoming calls are free. That is
>>>>assumed here. People have never paid for incoming calls. In fact people
>>>>complain when they have to pay for incoming calls when they roam. Please
>>>>do not project your views to us. Nobody would want to pay for receiving
>>>>calls here.
>>>
>>>
>>>They might if they knew it would result in the cost of their outgoing
>
> calls
>
>>>dropping to half or less.
>>
>>They do not. I surely do not.
>
>
> It depends on the laws in each country, and if collusion is legal or not. In
> a free market, the total cost per call would fall dramatically with mobile
> party pays, because the cost becomes transparent (in the UK sense of the
> word!).

Here the law prevents bundling phones with connections and long
contracts (in the latter I am not sure though if it is really law).
People here are free to switch whenever they wish keeping the number. As
the result the cost of call to foreign network is well below the
termination fee, sometimes it is almost half of it. Also the termination
fees have dropped significantly from around 13 c/min to 6.8-10 c/min.

Osmo

"Ototin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 10:44:46 +0100, [email protected]
> (chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco)
> wrote:
>
> >You can usually figure out the costs of calls if you delve deep enough
> >into the web sites, but of more interest to me would be how people use
> >their phones. If someone has 1,000 minutes on a plan, but only averages
> >using 500 of them, then it doesn't make sense to divide the plan's cost
> >by a 1,000 to get the per minute cost.
>
> So, for the sake of comparison assume that the 1,000 minutes is used
> up. And also assumed a usage during a specific time period, for
> example, from 07:00 to 20:00 everyday.

I divided the 1000 minutes that way because it represents the non-business
use of a typical user in the U.S.. There certainly are many, many business
people that use 1000 peak minutes (salespeople, real estate agents, etc.)
but they are not the majority.

It really doesn't matter how you slice it, or how many minutes you use in a
scenario, as long as you make it a fair comparison by not claiming something
like "well, I make only outgoing calls to landlines, and no one calls me due
to the termination charges." The second scenario I did, showed a much
smaller difference, when you look only at peak minutes, but this is not the
typical use of a mobile phone.

"Osmo R" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> Here the law prevents bundling phones with connections and long
> contracts (in the latter I am not sure though if it is really law).

California originally prohibited linking the handset price with a contract,
but eliminated this restriction more than ten years ago.

> People here are free to switch whenever they wish keeping the number. As
> the result the cost of call to foreign network is well below the
> termination fee, sometimes it is almost half of it.

This is the key problem with CPP, and every study on the subject has reached
the same conclusion. The termination fees are significantly raising the
price per call, because the termination fee becomes the major part of the
cost of wireless service.

> Also the termination fees have dropped significantly from around 13 c/min
to 6.8-10 c/min.

Still very high. The regulators should limit termination fees to the same
level as what a carrier charges to call a landline or mobile, at the same
day and time.

Steven M. Scharf wrote:
> "Osmo R" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>
>> Here the law prevents bundling phones with connections and long
>> contracts (in the latter I am not sure though if it is really law).
>>
>
>
> California originally prohibited linking the handset price with a
> contract, but eliminated this restriction more than ten years ago.

Here removing the man is considered on 3G phones. The removing should be
temporary. So many temporary decisions end up being permanent so I am
not that keen on seeing it lifted. The problem with 3G is not the cost
of the handsets but operators not giving good enough plans. They give
the same as with GSM so why bother.

I have no interest in paying for anyone's handset in my phone bills.

>
>> People here are free to switch whenever they wish keeping the
>> number. As the result the cost of call to foreign network is well
>> below the termination fee, sometimes it is almost half of it.
>
>
> This is the key problem with CPP, and every study on the subject has
> reached the same conclusion. The termination fees are significantly
> raising the price per call, because the termination fee becomes the
> major part of the cost of wireless service.

And just how many of those studies have studied the situation in Finland?

>> Also the termination fees have dropped significantly from around 13
>> c/min
>
> to 6.8-10 c/min.
>
> Still very high. The regulators should limit termination fees to the
> same level as what a carrier charges to call a landline or mobile, at
> the same day and time.

I agree they should be limited. I am not exactly sure of the powers the
regulators have but in general they prefer negotiations instead of
dictating the prices. However, the termination fee is not that much an
issue as the calls already cost less. The fact that we have a separation
between service and network operators confuses the issue even though all
the three network operators have their own service operator.

Osmo

Osmo R wrote:

> And just how many of those studies have studied the situation in Finland?

*smack*

Probably none. Why do you insist things must be the same in other countries
as in Finland? Give it a rest. The market is COMPLETELY different there than
it is here in the US. That much is not going to change unless Finland
suddenly acquires tons of land and grows to a population of 250 or 300
million people and suddenly ALSO acquires the political structure the
telecomm industry has here.

In other words, find something else to whine about.


--
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Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / [email protected] / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free"
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