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From: dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Are Cellular Calls Free to Landline Customers, or Not?
Message-ID: <68908@bu.edu.bu.edu>
Date: 16 Nov 90 17:22:29 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 828, Message 2 of 7


Bob Sherman wrote in volume 10, issue 822:

| A recent item in one of the communications trade publications stated
| that a major New England cellular provider was about to begin
| reversing that trend by charging the landline caller for calls made TO
| cell phones.

| In other words, if the cell phone places the call, they pay the air
| charges, but if a landline places the call to the cell phone, they
| will be charged the air charges.

There's a bit of a complication here.  How much do I, using a landline
to place a call to a cellular phone, pay for airtime?  If the wireline
carrier and the non-wireline carrier charge different amounts for
airtime, do I pay different amounts for calling the customers of one
from the customers of the other?

If one acquaintance of mine uses a cell phone for business and has a
package that involves prepaying for ten hours of airtime every month
and then 33c peak, 20c off-peak after that, but another friend uses
the cell phone principally for weekend getaways and road emergencies
and has an after-hours package of no prepaid airtime, 65c peak, and
10c off-peak, do I pay the airtime rates in their packages for calling
them (or perhaps nothing for calling the first person I mentioned if
his/her total airtime for that billing cycle, including my call, is
under the prepaid minimum)?  Is it ethical or even legal for the
cellular companies to tell my telco what arrangements their customers
have with them?

Instead, does my telco charge me some standard generic rate structure
for calls to cellular phones, perhaps with various high-usage packages
available for those of us (say, if we have cell phones ourselves and
sometimes forward our landlines to them) who call cellular numbers a
lot?

There is also the matter of placing long-distance calls to cellular
numbers.  What I described above has to be answered again for every
inter-LATA carrier.

Next: suppose the caller claims that the number he or she dialed had
been misrepresented to him or her as a landline, and he or she refuses
to pay the airtime charge?  Maybe the connection was very clear, or
the caller hung up instantly upon suspecting that it was a mobile
phone but still gets billed for one minute of airtime.

There are a *lot* of complications here.


David Tamkin  Box 7002  Des Plaines IL  60018-7002  708 518 6769  312 693 0591
MCI Mail: 426-1818  GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN  CIS: 73720,1570   dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com