Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 23:26:42 PDT From: Jim Hickstein Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: IDDD From a Cellular Phone Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 471, Message 9 of 11 Lines: 65 I recently signed up with GTE Mobilnet in San Francisco (give or take 100 miles), and almost immediately tried to dial a number in Japan, with 011 +81 ... and got a recording saying that I could not dial this call directly, but had to use some sort of calling card arrangement with a long-distance company. I promptly dialed 01+81 ... and my Pacific*Bell calling card number (while managing not to drive over the edge of the San Mateo bridge), and the call was completed. Humph. So, what was that all about? 10288.700.555.4141 gave an intercept of some kind (my memory is unclear), indicating that equal access was not available. 700.555.4141 yielded a polite "Thank you for using AT&T." So, if AT&T is *the* long-distance company I must use, how could there possibly be any confusion about billing arrangements? That was the explanation that seemed most likely to spring from the lips of a GTE employee the next morning. (*611 and *111, the latter for reporting network trouble, were routed to a recording that told me to call them back when it was convenient for them to come to the phone, i.e. business hours! Clearly their network doesn't *have* trouble during off-peak times, when I will do most of my calling. But I digress.) A friend of mine who reads every word of Telecom (I only manage about 10 per cent of it) mentioned that it was a policy to forestall fraud by "tumbler" phones making urgent international calls to drug-producing regions. Really? How? Or is it: How much? I was informed not an hour before by the GTE tech that my phone told the MTSO both its directory number *and* ESN, and that they had to match in the switch before a call would be completed. Doesn't this go far enough in avoiding fraud of that sort? Or must the customers (the *paying* customers, remember) be inconvenienced, forcing them to dial yet more digits? Why is equal-access not mandated for cellular telephone service, if indeed it is not? Could not the cellular companies provide it anyway, because they're nice guys? Or to get me off their backs? I *was* satisfied with GTE's service representative, who told me that he couldn't give me a map of the exact cell sites, but graciously showed me the big map on the wall of his office, updated daily. It had blue pins for cells off the San Jose switch, and red ones for the San Mateo switch. I thereby determined that I had made the right choice of carrier, as they had a number of cells in crucial locations that I transit in the hills around here. And I was *delighted* to discover that I could dial ten-digit numbers in my own area code (408), so my phone (formerly in 415) did not have to have all its memories reprogrammed. He confirmed that I can call from King City to Vacaville for the normal rate, a distance of some 150 miles, all that territory being part of my home system. In fact, I roam to Stockton (in my driveway, my house is a long-distance call: I live in Tracy) for $0.15/minute off-peak, even cheaper than the $0.20 home system rate, with no per-diem or other nonsense. They seem to do things right. I also confirmed, however, that they charge airtime twice if you use their voice message facility: once to record the incoming call, and again to get your message, which evidently *must* be done from the cell phone, and cannot be done with access codes from a land line. I did not find out whether they charge anything other than the monthly fee for forward-no-answer; I can imagine an unscrupulous carrier nailing the poor slobs every time a call is forwarded, or even airtime for calls forwarded to a land line! I hear someone nails you for 2x airtime for "conference" calls which clearly use only one radio channel. Let us hope this is not a vision of the future.