DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Douglas Scott Reuben) (11/23/90)
Hi- In response to one of my postings on why roam charges are unfair, etc., Jeff Wasilko was nice enough to respond to me, and stated that in some cases, such as Follow Me Roaming type set-ups, it was necessary to create a number for a roamer on the system which s/he was roaming on, and that I was paying for the costs associated with this, etc. I responded to this (below) and then Jeff mentioned a few more details about roamer billing which I thought were quite interesting: From: jjwcmp@ultb.isc.rit.edu Subject: Re: Roaming To: DREUBEN@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU [my summarized response to Jeff's first letter, below] } Hi- } } Yeah, that's true, but it is only true for "Follow-Me" type roaming systems, } IF you even use Follow Me roaming. } } So if you are on GTE Mobilnet, right, and then go to let's say NYC, (where } there is no Follow Me Roaming for some reason), you will still get socked } with a $3 (or more?) daily roam charge. } } And on the "A" systems that don't have "Roam America" (or whatever), you } also get ridiculously high charges (I think Albany/A/Cell One? is $4 } per day for me, $.90 cents per minute!), and in both the NYNEX example and } this one callers dial you via the roam port, which doesn't assign you a } number in their system, just pages your foriegn number. I forgot about that ... It has been awhile. BTW, I used to be a rep for the Albany Cell One (they did the customer service in Rochester, and had sales and switch personnel in Albany). The other reason I can think of for the charge is the cost of getting the roaming bill back to the home city). Each cellular company contracts with a 'clearinghouse' to handle this. The same company usually handles the follow-me type roaming. Most wireline companies use GTE's GTEDS database/clearinghouse, while most non-wireline companies use Appex-Lunyach's system. I'm assuming that the companies charge a per day /per user charge to get the calls back to the home system (GTE and Appex work together to exhange tapes when a wireline customer roams to a non-wireline system, or vice versa). The other thing to consider is that the celluar industry places a time-limit on getting calls back to the home carrier. It used to be three months, but I seem to remember it going to 60 days right before I left. So if there are problems, and the tapes get delayed, the company where the customer roamed gets stuck with the bill (and after 60 days, there is no way to collect it). Jeff Wasilko ----------------- Does anyone have an idea of what these billing systems REALLY cost? IE, is it really $3 per day to handle roamer billing? I realize that there is a cost associated with this, but $3 seems a bit high...! Doug dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu dreuben@wesleyan.bitnet