Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!bionet!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Cellular Daily Roaming Surcharge $4.00 per Day?
Message-ID: <14441@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 7 Nov 90 17:27:26 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 32
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 797, Message 1 of 10


In article <14414@accuvax.nwu.edu> pbhx@midway.uchicago.edu (Peter B.
Hayward) writes:

>In article <14279@accuvax.nwu.edu> I write:

->Great.  What a fine, generous attitude.  I suppose when I dial New
->York from my home near San Francisco, I am *NOT* using radio spectrum
->or system resources to find out if the number I want to talk to is
->available.

>Marc, I am mystified by the reason for your angry response here.
>Neither of you are charged for "incomplete calls, busy, or no
>answers."  How does this make cell phones different from LD carriers?

Sorry for the outburst.  I got angry because the original poster (from
McCaw?)  said it in a way that implied the no-charge for busy was a
gracious gift, rather than just a part of the business.  Most of us
here on the net know at least a LITTLE about computer networking, and
I can't believe a $2.00 charge is warranted for a couple of packets of
data exchanged with the home provider.  Especially considering the
high probability that the $2 is spread among only a very few calls
(like only 1 call in the examples that started this thread).  I agree
with an earlier poster who suggested that roaming should be handled as
a per-minute surcharge of, say, 10 or 20 cents per minute.

And for those of you who think Cellular is not like an AOS -- how do
they justify double-dipping for non-existant air time on forwarded
calls?


Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)