Advice for calling US Mobile Phone?

"Phil Thompson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >But we're talking telecoms - it's much more relavent to compare telecom
prices.
> >Landline costs are about the same in the UK as the US
>
> my mate took his $40/month landline out and now only has VoIP over his
> cable broadband. Transferred the same number to the VoIP.

You can do the same in the UK - after all VOIP will work the same anywhere in
the world if you've got broadband.

> >, possibly even a bit
> >cheaper in the UK. Mobile prices are much more expensive in the UK, despite
> >geography, and research shows this *is* down to the caller pays system.
>
> depends what you include in "mobile prices". My mate couldn't get the
> phone I have for free (from Orange on a 120 minute tariff) without
> paying about $400 for it. So that's about $35/month to add on.

Yup - termination premiums do go some way towards subsiding phones.

> Virgin mobile comparison:-
> Calls cost 15p a minute for the first five minutes of calls each day
> and 5p after that
> Calls are 25 cents a minute for the first ten minutes each day, and
> then just 10 cents a minute for the rest of the day.
>
> doesn't suggest any massive discepancy.

That's calls *from* mobiles. It's calls *to* mobiles which are much more
expensive in the UK.

--
Andy

---

› See More: Advice for calling US Mobile Phone?

On Sat, 28 May 2005 12:21:15 +0100, "Andy Pandy"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>You can do the same in the UK - after all VOIP will work the same anywhere in
>the world if you've got broadband.

indeed

>That's calls *from* mobiles. It's calls *to* mobiles which are much more
>expensive in the UK.

Calls *to* mobiles *from* landlines. On the Virgin US tariff you'll be
paying 25 cents/minute for the first incoming :-(

10 years ago we had a cost saving team at work and figured out "if you
want to call a mobile, use a mobile".

Phil
--
spamcop.net address commissioned 18/06/04
Come on down !

"Phil Thompson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> >That's calls *from* mobiles. It's calls *to* mobiles which are much more
> >expensive in the UK.
>
> Calls *to* mobiles *from* landlines.

And to mobiles from other mobile operators. The UK Virgin tariff you quoted
won't include calls to Vodafones/Orange etc. These will be much more expensive.

> On the Virgin US tariff you'll be
> paying 25 cents/minute for the first incoming :-(

But calling other mobiles will be the standard price.

> 10 years ago we had a cost saving team at work and figured out "if you
> want to call a mobile, use a mobile".

Preferably one on the same network. That's why I think mobile operators
shouldn't be allow to have restrictive T&C's, so any tariff available to the
public is also available to other telcos. So discount telcos like 1899 could buy
lots of high user tariffs and use them to route calls - thereby avoiding the
rip-off termination premiums.

--
Andy

chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco
wrote:
> Andy Pandy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> []
>> A better comparison would be cost of calling a US mobile
>> (including the charge paid by the recipient) with the cost of
>> calling a European/Australian mobile.
>
> It would be pretty tough to figure that out though, given the
> variation in what you pay for incoming in the US.
>
> Besides, I hardly ever call US cell phones- I call people on their
> landlines.

Given that the US system doesn't differentiate between landlines and
mobiles from the caller's POV, how do you know..?!

Ivor

chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco
wrote:
> Ivor Jones <[email protected]> wrote:

[snip]

> The US system seems great until you exhaust your daytime minutes,
> and start having to pay 25 to 40 cents a minute.

The majority of US plans have so many inclusive minutes this is unlikely,
certainly for me it would be almost unheard of..!

Ivor

Ivor Jones <[email protected]> wrote:

> chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco
> wrote:
> > Andy Pandy <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > []
> >> A better comparison would be cost of calling a US mobile
> >> (including the charge paid by the recipient) with the cost of
> >> calling a European/Australian mobile.
> >
> > It would be pretty tough to figure that out though, given the
> > variation in what you pay for incoming in the US.
> >
> > Besides, I hardly ever call US cell phones- I call people on their
> > landlines.
>
> Given that the US system doesn't differentiate between landlines and
> mobiles from the caller's POV, how do you know..?!

Most often, because they tell me.

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

"Ivor Jones" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco
> wrote:
> > Ivor Jones <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > The US system seems great until you exhaust your daytime minutes,
> > and start having to pay 25 to 40 cents a minute.
>
> The majority of US plans have so many inclusive minutes this is unlikely,
> certainly for me it would be almost unheard of..!

On Cingular you have rollover, so you end up accumulating tons of minutes.
On Sprint, they bump you up to the next tier of minutes, and don't gouge
you. Verizon still gouges you, but again, it's just a matter of fitting your
plan to your needs.

"chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:1gx9rn0.j7xdr86ktcn1N%[email protected]...
> Andy Pandy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> []
> > I would not mind at all if the premium to call a UK mobile was
> > approximately the same as the typical US mobile incoming call charge.
But
> > it isn't.
>
> You would need to find the average price for both- given how wide the
> variation can be in calling plans and patterns, no easy task I imagine.

Quite easy, given that there has been extensive study on the issue. The UK
averages about 2x the U.S. cost for peak calls. But this is misleading,
given the free nights and weekends on U.S. carriers, where neither the
caller or the receiver pays. The actual cost difference, when you take into
account all the calls, is much greater.

"Ivor Jones" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> harrogate2 wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > If the US systems are so much better, why is it then that a
> > significantly larger portion of the world is now using GSM rather
> > than TDMA? It's not just UK and Europe.
>
> We're talking about the way calls are charged for, not what type of system
> they use. The reasons for the US still using TDMA/CDMA and analogue are
> historical and also based on the gepgraphy of that country. The reasons
> for them using callee pays is largely due to the argument that the caller
> should not pay a premium due to the callee deciding they want to be
> reachable while mobile. You want to go mobile, *you* pay the cost of doing
> so..! Sounds reasonable to me.

The reason for CDMA is that it doesn't drop calls as readily, due to the
elastic capacity, and that you can cover a given area with less cell towers.
The whole world is moving to CDMA technology, even the GSM countries, so
don't use the word "historical"!

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 27 May 2005 22:53:33 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >And it would be really rare to get a CDMA signal in the UK!
>
> No, there is quite a lot of 3G coverage in the UK.

Good point. The whole world is moving to CDMA, too bad it couldn't be the
same standard!

Steven M. Scharf <[email protected]> wrote:

> "chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:1gx9rn0.j7xdr86ktcn1N%[email protected]...
> > Andy Pandy <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > []
> > > I would not mind at all if the premium to call a UK mobile was
> > > approximately the same as the typical US mobile incoming call charge.
> But
> > > it isn't.
> >
> > You would need to find the average price for both- given how wide the
> > variation can be in calling plans and patterns, no easy task I imagine.
>
> Quite easy, given that there has been extensive study on the issue.

What study is that, and given the rapidity with which calling plans
change, how current would it be?

> The UK
> averages about 2x the U.S. cost for peak calls.

What is the average cost for a peak call then? My average cost for a
peak call is less than one US cent a minute. I think there is too much
variation in this to find a useful comparison, quite frankly.

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

>> If the US systems are so much better, why is it then that a
>> significantly larger portion of the world is now using GSM rather
>> than TDMA? It's not just UK and Europe.

Aw, c'mon. GSM has nothing to do with who pays for the call. Cingular
and T-Mobile both use GSM in the US, and it's charged the same way as
any other US phone. In fact, my phone is AMPS/TDMA/GSM (one of the
few ever made) and I pay the same regardless of the network I use.

> The reasons for them using callee pays is largely due to the
> argument that the caller should not pay a premium due to the callee
> deciding they want to be reachable while mobile.

As the paper cited earlier in this argument noted, since the mobile
customer pays all of the mobile charges here, the customer cares what
the cost is. As a result, the actual average cost per minute of
mobile service, counting subscription fees and all per call charges,is
much lower in the US than it is in Europe, about 10 cents/min here vs
about twice that in Europe.

There are two other reasons that the US went with mobile customer
pays. One is that US phone users expect local calls to be free or
close to it. In many areas of the country, even if a number is in the
same area code, you dial 1+area code+number if it's a six cent toll
call, just so you shouldn't make a toll call by mistake. We've had a
bunch of attempts at caller-pays, all of which vanished without a
trace as the people who thought that they were so important that their
friends and business contacts would pay extra to call them turned out
to be mistaken.

The last is that the US phone system uses a fixed ten-digit numbering
scheme with a three digit area code and seven digit number, and that's
not going to change. (Before someone asks why we don't use variable
length numbers like in Europe, we designed our long distance switching
system first, in the late 1940s when there were probably more phones
in North America than in the rest of the world combined. It made our
mechanical and relay switches much more flexible. The real question
is why when AT&T offered the fixed-length scheme to European PTTs,
they didn't take it, and they are now crawling toward fixed length
numbers 40 years later.) If we were doing caller-pays, we'd have had
to allocate new area codes for mobile numbers in each area of the US
and Canada, and there weren't enough unused area codes to do that.

A positive result of the combined numbering is that the US mobile and
landline networks are much more integrated than the European ones are.
We can port phone numbers not just from one mobile carrier to another,
but from mobile to landline and back, with landline also including
VoIP. If I decide that I like my mobile and I want to dump my
landline, I can port my landline number so that callers don't even
know that I've switched and I don't have to give out a new number. Is
that ever going to happen in Europe? Unlikely.

R's,
John

John R. Levine wrote:

[snip]

> A positive result of the combined numbering is that the US mobile
> and landline networks are much more integrated than the European
> ones are. We can port phone numbers not just from one mobile
> carrier to another, but from mobile to landline and back, with
> landline also including VoIP. If I decide that I like my mobile
> and I want to dump my landline, I can port my landline number so
> that callers don't even know that I've switched and I don't have to
> give out a new number. Is that ever going to happen in Europe?
> Unlikely.

Another reason I like the US system.

I seem to be in a huge minority here in the UK though.

Ivor

chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco <[email protected]> wrote:
> Steven M. Scharf <[email protected]> wrote:
>> The UK averages about 2x the U.S. cost for peak calls.
>
> What is the average cost for a peak call then? My average cost for a
> peak call is less than one US cent a minute.

To an arbitrary mobile phone? Really? In that case you win.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 36 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Queens Day in Amsterdam; the Grand Canyon; Amman, Jordan

Mark wrote:
> Hi, I live in the UK and my girlfriend is going to america as part of an
> exchange programme for the summer.
>
> Does the cheapest/easiest way for us to keep in contact simply involve
> her buying any old USA pay as you go mobile phone and then me calling
> her via a voice over ip service? Can anyone recommend a decent one with
> not too much lag? Or is there a better method than this, ie: is it
> cheaper to register with one of those calling card companies in the UK
> and call using their number? This'd be great if I could use a UK mobile
> phone to call her and not pay through the roof?
>
> Thanks for your help!
>
> Mark.