DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Douglas Scott Reuben) (11/04/90)
A few posts back Brian Litzinger mentioned that he was charged *two*
daily roam charges, one in the Stockton Cell One (McCaw) system, the
other in the Sac Cell One System.
This happened to me too, and the practice seems quite common - Cell
One San Francisco does this as well.
Sacramento is the main "center" for the Sac, Stockton, and Reno, NV
systems, and (I believe) if you have service in any one of those areas
as your "home" system, you can go into any of the others without
"roaming", ie, the roam light won't come on since the System ID code
is supposedly the same for all the systems. (Yet there seem to be
"secondary ID codes" in the format of 30xxx which no one seems to know
about ... Cell One SF told me this and I have no idea if they just made
it up or what).
So, for example, a customer with a 209 Stockton number can go to Reno
without having the roam light come on, and to him it appears as if he
is in one system.
Yet a roamer making the same trip is going from the Stockton system to
the Sac system and then to the Reno/Lake Tahoe system. Since Cell
One/McCaw charges a $2 daily roaming charge, a roamer who calls *611
and is told "Oh, we are all one big system, all the way up to Reno on
I-80" THINKS that there will be one daily charge, when, in effect, if
the phone is used for a billable call in all three areas, the roamer
will get all THREE $2 daily charges.
This is true of the San Francisco system - Cell One SAYS that its SF
system spans from Santa Rosa in the north to Santa Cruz in the south,
yet a roamer driving down US-101 and using his phone in each area will
pay a $2 a day charge for Santa Rosa, San Francisco, AND Santa Cruz.
The really stupid part about all this is that he will never know it
until the bill comes, because the roam port (415-860-7626) pages in
all three systems, and if the roamer reprograms his phone to the
SF/Cell One ID # (00041??), it will show "Home" in all three areas.
Roamers will only find out about this once they get their bills, and
if anyone has a mobile company as bad as mine, you will probably be
expected to pay for the charges despite what anyone at either your
home or the roam systems told you.
In Brian's case, he may have been in a transitional area between the
Stockton and Sac systems, so that depending on how the radio waves
travelled, he was alternating between systems. This happened to me
while up in the hills on CA-17, between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz,
where I kept getting caught between both systems, and was billed two
daily roam charges even though I was parked at a payphone along the
road for an hour.
It is unfortunate that mobile companies see fit to charge all of these
excessive "surcharges" for service, as all it tends to do is make the
mobile phone less productive and discourages further use by their
customers. Charging multiple dialy roam charges - or roam charges at
all - is an effective disincentive to use my phone to its fullest
extent. Frequently, when I find myself roaming and know that a call
will cost $3 (daily charge) and $.90 per minute (as the Philadelphia
"A" system will), I'll just wait till I get back to my home area or go
to a payphone (especially if it is a local call). The same goes for
other charges, like airtime for call forwarding. Rather than tell
people to call me at the car all the time, and that: "If I'm not in
the car it will forward to a land number where you can get me...", I
now have to leave a list of numbers where I will be.
So rather than making a REASONABLE profit on a roamer call, or $4 per
month for having Call-Forwarding in my feature package (plus all the
calls I get when I am actually in the car since I USED to use my car
number as my general, 'always-reachable' number), the mobile companies
will get nothing. Many other people I talk to are also quite leary of
using these "extra" services which cell companies seem all to eager to
charge for. I can't see why they do this, as it would seem that such
charges tend to discourage usage for all but the most urgent calls.
Wouldn't they make more money in the long run by encouraging the cell
phone to be used as often as possible, rather than tacking on charges
that tend discourage use?
Hopefully other mobile companies will do what SNET has done and
abolish all daily roaming charges for their customers and set up a
flat, $.60 per- minute charge while roaming.
-------------------
Favorite Metro Mobile quote of the week (YES, I *do* seem to have to
call them at *least* once a week!):
Metro> "Oh yes, of course we are DMXed to Boston ... have been for a
year!"
Me> "So how come no one can call me there directly?"
Metro> "Did you turn your phone on?"
Me> (NO, I JUST EXPECTED IT TO PUT THE KEY IN THE IGNITION ALL BY
ITSELF!!!)
"Yes, it was on..."
Metro> "Is this Boston, Mass. you are talking about?"
What I SHOULD have said> "Would you like me to shoot you now, or wait
till you get home? !!!!!! "
Doug
dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu
dreuben@wesleyan.bitnet
[Moderator's Note: Is it just me, or do most of you find the 'B'
carriers to me a little easier to reason with and a little less
expensive in their charges, particularly where roaming is concerned?
My experience in roaming is limited. PAT]rees@pisa.ifs.umich.edu (Jim Rees) (11/06/90)
In article <14280@accuvax.nwu.edu>, DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Douglas Scott Reuben) writes: >Wouldn't they make more money in the long run by encouraging the cell >phone to be used as often as possible, rather than tacking on charges >that tend discourage use? I think this is probably institutional inertia at work. When cell phones first came out, they cost about $2000 each, so they were only used by business folks who didn't care how much they cost. Now that you can buy a cell phone for as little as $100 (or less if you agree to extortionate service "packages"), a more people-oriented rate structure might make better sense. But the people who set cell phone rates don't have much incentive to lower rates, especially when they enjoy a duopoly. > Metro> "Is this Boston, Mass. you are talking about?" Boston, Virginia is lovely this time of year, but I don't know if they have cell service. I was fascinated by cellphones when they first came out, but now that they have come down in price to where I might be able to afford one, it sounds like the companies are so sleazy that I would rather not have to deal with them. Now I have a question. Suppose I have a cell phone, and service in my local area, and I travel to a different area and want to place a call. What do I need to do? Just pick up the phone and dial? Call a special number and tell them I want to roam for the day? Go visit an office somewhere and put down a deposit? What do I need to do to arrange for incoming calls to reach me? Can callers use my regular phone number or do I get a new one when I'm roaming? What about roaming in foriegn countries (HK in particular)? (I looked in the archives for a cellphone primer but didn't see one.) [Moderator's Note: We need a good cellphone tutorial in the archives. To answer your questions: Yes, you generally just pick up the phone and call. Charges will be forwarded back to your home system via intercompany settlements; you will be billed a month or two or three later. You keep your phone number when roaming. Incoming calls can reach you two ways: The caller can dial the roaming port for the place where you are. On hearing new dial tone, then dial your number. In the alternative, many carriers offer 'follow me' roaming. By punching a certain code in the new city, you tell that carrier to advise your home carrier of your whereabouts, and to forward calls to you automatically. In the first case, the caller pays the toll to reach the roamer port in the distant city; the the latter case, the toll charge for the call forwarded on to you from your home system is paid by yourself. PAT]
forrette@cory.berkeley.edu (Steve Forrette) (11/11/90)
In article <14378@accuvax.nwu.edu> you write: >What about roaming in foriegn countries (HK in particular)? I remember a few months back that someone posted an article about foreign roaming, and that one of the systems in Hong Kong was compatible with the North American standard. All you needed was a credit card for billing, and you were set! [Moderator's Note: I think the expert on this would probably be John Covert. He has written before about cell phone use in Germany. Maybe he can add to this thread. PAT]
DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Douglas Scott Reuben) (11/15/90)
Some Digest readers mentioned recently that the reason cellular roamers were assesed a "daily charge" was so that the roaming system could cover the costs of verifying with the roamer's home system if the roamer is a customer "in good standing", ie, has paid all the bills, etc. Although I agree that this is necessary and quite desireable, I would tend to argue (as have others) that $2 or 3 per day is WAY too high a charge for such a service. Not only is it too high, but roam rates in some systems (especially those set up along highways on the outskirts of large cities) tend to be SO much higher than a home customer pays that the profit from one 1 minute call alone will probably be enough to cover the costs of verification. (I'm not sure how true this is, but it seems that many smaller systems are set up, if possible, along the periphery of a larger system, generally along a stretch of highway, so that they can "get" customers who live in/use the larger system. IE, I'm driving south of Albany,NY, and once I leave the Albany system there is some system called "Cell One of Upstate New York" [upstate= south of Albany??!!?]) along I-87. This system stays in range for about 25 minutes, and had quite good coverage on the Thruway/I-87. They charge $3 per day to roam, and about 90 cents per minute! I doubt they charge their "home" customers (all 20 of them! :-) ) the same rate. So do they figure they will make a lot of extra $$$$ because they have one or two towers near the Thruway and will pick up Albany customers (or other cusotmers going along I-87) who don't realize that they are in a the "Upstate/Cell One" system?) Moreover, even though there may be costs associated with verification of a roamer, doesn't this occur BOTH ways? IE, although Metrophone/"A"/Phil. may charge ME $3 per day for roaming, Metro Mobile (my 'company') charges the same for Metrophone customers roaming in Metro Mobile's area. So why can't they just say "We'll verify your customers for free if you verify ours for free as well..."? Or do they both make too much money with this example of a 'nickel-and-dime surcharge' that they see no reason to end it? (I don't get charged if I use my Pac*Bell calling card in NY Tel territory for "verification", and NY Tel customer's don't get charged in California, besides local usage rates, or course. I'm sure NY Tel has to verify Pac*Bell cards [one would hope! :-) ], yet they don't charge anything extra. Why do Cell companies think they should be able to do this?) Finally, even if they should be allowed to charge for this, why is it that some companies, like Cell One/Boston, don't charge a daily roam charge? (They don't charge for Metro Mobile or Metro One (NY) customers; they may have other agreements with other carriers.) If they can work out a system where there is NO roam charge as in the case of Boston, what is to prevent this on a uniform, national basis?? Doug dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu dreuben@wesleyan.bitnet