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Carriers Might Profit From Cell Number Portability
Makarand writes "Carriers that are adding cell-number portability fees to your monthly
cell phone bills (while fighting against actually implementing the requirement) may actually rake in profits from these levies as the total amounts collected will be more than the projected costs of meeting the FCC's
number portability requirements. Although federal law requires that such fees be 'just and reasonable', it
does not require reporting of their actual expenses. Consumer advocates feel that
the number portability verification processes required are similar to those used by long-distance phone companies when a customer switches from one service provider to another and there is little reason to believe that expenses to meet portability requirements should vary widely among carriers and be so excessive as to bring profits for the carriers."
is this supposed to be surprising or something ?
We're talking about private corporations trying to make more profit after all.
"Although federal law requires that such fees be 'just and reasonable', it does not require reporting of their actual expenses."
That pretty much sounds like giving the cell phone corporations carte blanche.
The portable cell numbers came to use in Finland just a month ago. The result was a furious fight between the operators fighting for customers: free radio phones, DVD players etc. if you became their customer. But then one of the operators realized it's better off to give benefits for existing customers. They lowered prices for the weekend and started a campaign saying "Our customers are doing better". I think that's the right way to go. I don't want to be switching my cell phone operator all the time. So in the end, customers really did benefit from the change.
Companies will charge for the air we breathe, if they get the chance...
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
What makes me ill about the FCC allowing them to charge for this is that we're still going to be paying that $1 "number portability fee" 20 years down the road when all the carriers have long since paid off the expenses of "upgrading" their networks. Does anyone know if there's a date set for when they can't stop milking us on this anymore???
Darned tropical millipede! What's it doing in our apartment?
This just in....companies out to make a profit!! :)
;)) and is ready to impose regulations if they really get carried away.
Ok, seriously, this feels like just another article to get everyone all riled up over "the man". Yes, it seems outrageous what companies like Sprint and NextTel are charging. Does this mean that they aren't just trying to cover their costs and possible pot a bit of profit off of a new service offered to customers? Ok, maybe it seems like they want to make an excessive profit. Don't like it? Well, it looks like the gov't already has a watchful eye on them (if that's any comfort
Everything a company does can't be done just at cost. A company needs to make a profit to be able to fully survive. It looks like Verizon is able to recoup these costs thanks to existing reserves or they are willing to take the hit for increased customer satisfaction which is great to see. It's so great to see that if I was in the States, I would probably switch over to Verizon as soon as my contract with one of those other companies was up (or sooner!).
To be terribly surprised by anything like this. Just wait until the portability measures are implemented and forgotton too. Don't be surprised if the charges are still there, especially since they are effectively 'hidden' from view.
I live in Germany where we have that feature for some while. One problem now is that I call a number that "belongs" to the same provider that I'm using, so I think that I do a call inside the providers net (which usually is cheap), but in fact the one that I call has switched to another provider and my call costs much more than I expect. :-(
Verizon has been collecting "number portability fund" fees on my land-line for years. Can I migrate my number to another carrier? Hell no! Can I get my fees waived/refunded? Sorry, but those funds go into a common pool to provide number portability. But I can't move MY number! Sorry, but your number is in an area where number portability is not offered...
The only way to win this game is not to play - I canceled my second line earlier this year. Take that Verizon!
... here in the Netherlands you only pay about 20 Euro *once* for the number portation to your new GSM provider.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
1) cell phone number portability
2) profit!
In australia there was a big thing about the largest carrier preventing number porting. Our consumer watchdog (ACCC) got onto the case and made things start to happen which was good for us consumers!
Here is a report detailing what the ACCC requested from the ACA (australian communications authority) to look into number porting for australian carriers.
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Here in the Netherlands cell phone providers have been forced to let customers keep their existing phone numbers from competitors for a few years now. They don't charge extra for it (I don't think they're allowed, the mobile phone business is very strictly regulated over here), but they do have a tendency to take much longer to port your number than they should. I think it works moderately well, prices aren't exactly low but I think they'd be signigicantly higher without mandatory number portability.
Has Verizon wavered in their stance in the past two months, or are they just trying to leave themselves some wriggle room?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
The general consensus seems to be that this is a ploy by the telecom industry to get more money. This will definitly happen, but we will probably see a more idelistic rift develope between the major carriers as the scramble to capitalize. method 1: Yes, this change will get us more money. The easier and less inconvinient it is for customers to switch providers, the more customers will abandon their current provider and come our way. Based on that we are willing to eat the (trivial) cost of implementing such a thing (and we'll even lobby the FCC to push it through)... (carriers that have expressed this sentiment: verizon wireless, others?) method 2: This will cost us in the long run, the easier/less inconvinient it is for customers to leave us, the more customers will leave us. Based on this we will fight this proposed standard via lawsuite and lobby. If this standard IS pushed through, we will ensure we are able to levy fees however we see fit, as to recoup our losses (mostly, the loss of business, not the cost of implementing the change) (carriers expressing this sentiment: Sprint, Nextel, others?) method 1, has seemed to take a self-riteous consumer advocate aproch. Claiming to absorb all costs because they are fight for the just and equitable. (insert wanking motions here) method 2, has seemed to take a passive aproch, believing that this is inevitable in the long run, and their best option is to bargin as many rights as possible... Rights method 2 wishes to retain: don't pay your outstanding ballance/early disconnect fee? don't get your number transfered. it will stay in limbo until you pay up. pay a monthly number portability fee. (this is nothing new) pay a fee for transfering your number to your new carrier (this is nothing new) be required to have your "i want to quit" call routed through a special disconnects/transfers office... subject to office ours (2am-5am EST anyone)? and of course, the ever presant ultra-long hold time... all in all, it'll be interesting to see how long the riteous stick to their guns, and don't rebuke on all the great things they've promised, and also how much the opposition gets in exchange for the introduciton of number portability.
I was thinking of changing carriers because my (Telus) plan was a real ripoff. Then I went saltwater flyfishing and forgot that my cell phone was in my coat pocket. It solved the problem. I have found that if my voice mail, e-mail and pager will not suffice for the caller then the person calling was not worth talking to anyway. I always return calls from real people and finally realised that the ones that are desperate to get something for nothing in a hurry use the cell to call you. If it is that important people will get through. Cell phones for some people are a huge waste of money. They were for me. The next time I think about getting a cell I will just go fishing instead!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Ok, number portability... this is cool... I have to say keeping your old number when switching carriers, this is just spiffy. Paying a fee for it... well might as well, you are nickled and dimed on this issue anyway... not a big thing.
I live in the States, while I mobile use isn't quite up there with the rest of the world, we already have had create quite a few extra area codes. That pesky issue of running out of seven digit phone numbers.
What I want is a system where by you actually keep your freaking landline number, and dial a diffrent prefix to hit the users mobile or fax/data device.
Now that would be what I call real number portability!
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"ut they do have a tendency to take much longer to port your number than they should."
When I switched from ETN to OneTel it took almost 4 months to move my number.
You answered your own question. In a nutshell Cellular companies don't want to make it easy for you to move to the competition. Can't take your number with you? Have to buy a new phone, because the perfectly good one you have will not work on our network (they'll carry your signal while your roaming though). Gotta get a new contract if you want to do this or that. Charge this, charge that. Drag feet.
Sounds like they're up to their dirty old tricks again. But then again, what are we to expect?
Why not just have your land line call forward to your cell phone, and tell people to call your land line number? You can switch the # you're forwarding to whenever you get a different cell.
In the Netherlands we already have had that system in place for years.
Our normal land lines have prefixes for the major cities, such as:
Rotterdam - 010
Amsterdam - 020
Utrecht - 030
GSM, buzzers/pagers, and such were using 06 prefixes. Sexlines and info numbers with costs per minute/conversation are 0900 (used to be 06 as well), and free informational phonenumbers (toll-free) are 0800.
Number portability for mobile phone numbers has been regulated in the Netherlands for a while now due to OPTA. If a provider has its services down for a certain percentage in a month the OPTA will fine the appropriate provider.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
With number portability in a free market, the greedy actors are exposed really fast.
There is also no fee for porting here, the only fee is an optional (for the company) connection fee. The very notion of having a fee is absurd in a GSM system, remember; it is made for quick portability. Porting your subscription is done in one step: Tell your new operator that you are switching to them and be sure to mention the phone # while you're at it. Done. The new SIM card arrives after a while and the porting date comes via email. Or snailmail if you want it to.
I'm all for capitalism. However, it works best when there is a somewhat equal distribution of wealth. If corporations are permitted to squeeze every last dime from consumers and workers pockets, we will soon find our economy in shambles.
The regulatory pendulum has swung to far in one direction. It's time to put the regulatory squeeze back on corporations. We must ensure that, instead of leeching off our economic engine, corporations contribute to it in a healthy, productive way.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
As someone who has still resisted the urge to buy a mobile phone and thus pump an additional $100AU a month into the telecommunication system while spending large portions of my day typing text messages to someone who people who don't want to read with a keypad that is designed to be operated by a lemming, I'm probably not the best person to comment on this story, however . . .
Whats the deal with the keeping the phone number the same for your whole life! (well until we are all electronically tagged at birth in which case you dont have a choice). I like moving house, because it means I get to choose who has my number. It weeds out all those people (work bosses, annoying friends, marketing, etc) that someone managed to get hold of your phone number can no longer bug you.
Look at changing your phone number as exercising your right to privacy!
I'm shocked, shocked to find that the carriers are using this as an excuse to gouge their customers!
Whatever next? Companies that exploit their workers? Accountants that fudge the numbers? Politicians that lie?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
That's how long it took me when I ported my pay-as-you-go (ie, no fixed monthly fee) phone from one provider to another last year.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I pay $2.20 on my bill for "number portability."
I called to let them know that I am dropping them for another carrier at the end of this month, and that I planned on taking my number with me...
They said, and this was a real gas, "We don't offer that service. You'll have to give up your phone numbers if you leave Sprint."
"But you're charging me for number portability!"
"I'm sorry, sir, but you won't be able to keep your numbers"
"Then why are you charging me for number portability"
"Sir, Federal regulations require that we charge the number portability fee"
"..."
I couldn't believe my ears..
Anyone else with Sprint heard the same story? I think that charging a fee for a service one can't utilize comes down to, oh I dunno, fraud...
I did this with my phone as well... but it took a few calls to get it going. Basically, my home phone rings 4 times, then rolls over to my cell, or if my home phone is busy, it automatically rolls. That way I get the "free" voice mail and caller-ID of my cellphone.
The services you need are:
call-forward no-answer
call-forward busy
A few technicians I called did not know about these, but once I finally found one who did, it was great!
Let's not forget that the typical cell phone conversation goes like this:
"Hi, it's me! Where are you?"
"I'm saltwater flyfishing. Where are you?"
"I'm in the car on the way home -- oops, hold on, I have another call."
Yawn. If you don't have time for a real conversation, chances are you won't have one, least of all on a cell phone while on a boat, in a car, or in a public place like a supermarket where you're annoying everyone around you anyway. CEOs of major corporations excluded, of course.
We've had portable numbers for years... and most of the US mobile companies are Europe based and work in the UK, T-Mobile, Vodaphone etc. So the quick summary is...
1) We've done it in the UK (and the rest of Europe)
2) European companies dominate the carrier networks
3) We're just doing it to piss you off.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I love my cell number, very easy to remember pattern ( xyx y[x-1][y-1]0 ) and I'd love to move it over to Nextel. Since my employer is the main source of phone traffic to my cell, I can get added to the company plan if I have a NexTel phone.
I'd also like to get a slightly larger phone. My current one is too small for my hands.
The moral of the story, never let your S.O. pick out something as personal as your cell phone.
Off on a tangent as usual
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
1. Go into a supermarket 2. Fork over 20 euro/dollar/pounds 3. Get a pay-as-you-go phone
The ellipses of cellular usage are bizarre things, from: 'The fact that American companies and ONLY American companies charge both the person who placed the call AND the person receiving it doesn't make us BOTH suckers,' to 'technological fashion demands that I pay a lot of money so my boss can reach me while I'm making love.'
Yes, the inner game of cellular use is a strange one and you've got to play it as smartly as possible on your end because you are an amateur while the people working for the multibillion-dollar corporations whose whole reason for existing is to replace the payphone are trained professionals who think of ways of rogering their customers on overtime.
So where does this leave you when it comes to number portability?
Stay flexible. As the poster from Finland pointed out, where he is, number portability lead to companies making big efforts to keep customers from switching to other companies. Something like that *might* happen here--you can certainly imagine that entering the mix when the legislation is enacted--but it is just as likely that the same class of businessmen who brought you the eternal copyright will certainly use the fees the law grants to hide another fifty-cents on your bill every month while kicking and screaming to avoid giving you a choice. Why would anyone expect them to do otherwise? There's no downside for them.
Your part of the game as a customer is to maintain all the flexibility, and the best bargaining position you can in dealing with them. Look at it this way. As things are now, switching out of a new contract with a provider already means, handing a company that has proven its lack of worth a stack of bills so you can own a dead cell phone.
Cellular providers hold all the psychological cards against switching so it's your job to find the company that combines the strongest mix of features with the strongest motivation for keeping you. If that means paying ten dollars a month so you can plan-hop when they offer something better than what you have, or jump ship if someone else outbids them, so be it.
Making the right decision can surprise you: I use a phone from one of the smaller fish in the big game and during the recent blackout, my web service functioned for a while even after my voice service didn't, and I ended lending my phone to several people whose service only came back hours later.
I think the best way of thinking about ones relationship with cellular providers is to think of it as friendly warfare.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
This way the telcos can't rise and obscure the prices by claiming it's because of the number portability.
--
Binaries may die but source code lives forever
againt this shows the difference between Europe and the USA. I live in the UK, and number portablity is painless, free, and well organised to the point that people dont even think tiwice about it. Although oftel says 2 weeks at max to transfer, it usually happens within days. cellphoen operators cannot refuse to do it.
:) especially with me being a good revenue costomer for them! :)
more importantly, thanks to the strict regultations, number portability gives an EXTREME amount of power to the users.
For example, if I ever feel that TMobile (my provider) is not performing as well as i expect, i simply threaten to ask for my PAC number (a number provided to port your number) and its suprising how far they will bend back to help you
Have a nice day!
In the US before cell phones started becoming more common, companies providing long distance service on land lines (AT&T, sprint, MCI, etc.) got to be quite competitive, resulting in their offering to pay on your behalf (or otherwise refund you) a "switching fee" that the local phone company would usually charge (like 5 to 10 bucks). Plus, they would offer to switch you back for free if you weren't satisfied.
Around the same time a phenomenon known as "slamming" was growing into quite a nuisance. This is where your phone service (local or long distance) would end up being switched without your explicit authorization as the result of your agreeing to some telemarketing offer.
My point? IANACPC (not a cell phone customer), but given this number portability stuff, I might expect to see slamming starting with cell phone carriers, causing grief to customers over early termination charges, unless of course the carriers would offer to pay that too.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
The bigger question is how you ever got to talk to a person?
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Just to summarise, in Australia the ACCC (consumer competition watchdog) mandated that number portability be free, since by forcing people to pay to keep their old number they were effectively impeding businesses that relied on their number being well known to conduct their business, thereby reducing competition because customers were less likely to change carriers as a result.
So now, if I want to change to a better provider here in Australia, it won't cost me anything to keep my old number.
Ironically, I remain with my current provider (Optus) because they still provide the best package for my requirements. So telcos only need fear number portability if their services are inferior to that of the opposition (hence the largest telco, Telstra, fighting it all the way until forced).
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
I recently decided to switch from Verizon to Cavalier Telephone, a local CLEC. It took me almost two months to complete the transition, including some two weeks where I had no inbound phone service, unless the caller was coming from Cavalier's network (i.e. 0.0001% of the universe). Sparing everyone the gory details, I had problems including:
- Cavalier required me to be at home to tell a technician to cut over from my Verizon line, despite my having told them it was OK at least a dozen times over the phone
- Neither company could explain exactly what was happening with the split-bank on my line, required (at least by Verizon) for DSL. Understanding a that problem and getting it fixed added two weeks to the switchover.
- When Verizon finally claimed it had ported my old number, they didn't bother to change their routing information, leaving me with my lack of inbound service. Neither company had a way of expediting a fix ("That'll be 3 business days, sir"), or even a person or department who specifically dealt with number portability or the like.
I was paying both companies throughout the switch, mainly due to the fact that if I cancelled my Verizon account, the number I was trying to port would have disappeared for good.I was told many times over that neither company had ever experienced such a painful switch; even so, the fact that such a disaster could happen at all tells me that companies aren't paying nearly the attention they should to number portability issues, considering the millions they're raking in from it.
How To Get Humans To Mars
1. As there is more electronic transfer of information, the number of FAX numbers in use is probably stagnant, or decreasing. There have been some hurdles such as adoption of electronic signatures, but in the long run, the FAX is probably dead.
2. While internet usage in the home is increasing, there is a net outflow from dialup to broadband. The beauty of broadband is you don't need to either A. Live with no phone service while the teenagers in your house are looking up something awful on the web, or B. fork out the cash for an additional phone line and number.
Does anyone have a good feel for what the realistic saturation date is for US phone lines?
In the long run, I wouldn't be surprised to see cell phones start to deviate more and more from the whole standard of 10 digit phone numbers towards some combination of email address rather than phone number, and VoIP type service. It would be a tough sell, as it would banish one from incoming calls from landline phones, but if the service was cheap enough, it could spur adoption. Good news, it's not neccessarily mutually exclusive from traditional 10 digit service in the shorter term.
Imagine if the FCC told Cisco and all the ISPs that every IPv4 address had to be portable between every provider, so that customers weren't inconvenienced when they switched. Everyone would say hell no, because it would destroy intelligent heirarchichal routing. The backbone routers would end up needing a flat list of all 4 billion IP addresses and which specific destination to go for each one. Routing CPU usage would increase drastically, and the lookup tables would require what, 8GB of memory at minimum?
Phone numbers used to route heirarchichally too, and it made sense for the equipment and the carriers, but LD and now local carriers are being forced to make this architectural blunder to satisfy consumers and the FCC... blah.
11*43+456^2
BEDMINSTER, NJ - Taking square aim at the anti-consumer, anti-competitive official position of many of its competitors, Verizon Wireless, operator of the nation's largest and most reliable wireless network, today stood firm in support of wireless customers' ability to keep their mobile phone numbers when switching from one wireless service provider to another. In a filing today, Verizon Wireless urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reject schemes from ALLTEL, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel and Sprint that would, if allowed, create new barriers to wireless customers who want to change service providers while keeping their mobile numbers with them.
Wireless number portability ("WNP," also known as local number portability "LNP"), scheduled to go into effect in many major U.S. markets beginning November 24, 2003, will allow customers to switch wireless service providers while keeping their mobile phone numbers.
Earlier this month, the "Wireless Carrier Group" (WCG), consisting of ALLTEL, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel and Sprint, told the FCC that their understanding of number portability will allow them to impose new barriers to switching that do not exist today, effectively derailing number portability.
These barriers could include special one-time porting fees or severely restricted "porting hours," such as from 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. They also include requiring a customer to pay an early termination fee and owed balances on his or her account as a condition for keeping a mobile telephone number. Even if a customer disputes the amount owed, these carriers threaten to prevent the customer from porting until he or she pays up. Other carriers are intending to impose restrictions that will frustrate customers who wish to port, such as severely limited porting hours.
"Now, on the verge of achieving wireless LNP, the Commission faces a direct challenge to it that, if not quickly and firmly rejected, will gut the effectiveness of the mandate," Verizon Wireless said in its filing. The WCG carriers ". . . make it clear that they will slow or block a customer's desire to change carriers and keep the same numbers until the customer 'settles up' his account."
In June, Verizon Wireless president and CEO Denny Strigl detailed the Verizon Wireless plan for implementing number portability: no up-front costs to current customers; no special barriers to switching from one service provider to another; fast service; and no hassle. In his presentation, Strigl said, "We will not charge any 'special fees' for customers who want to take their numbers with them. Our plan at Verizon Wireless is to treat porting customers the same way we treat any customer today. No change from today." Once portability is in place, Verizon Wireless may consider recovering operational costs to the tune of no more than 10 to 15 cents per month on customers' bills. Strigl noted that the company's position on number portability is a natural extension of the Verizon Wireless customer-focused "Worry Free Guarantee."
The official position of ALLTEL, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel and Sprint, however, is that they should be free to impose new costs and erect additional restrictions on their customers who want to switch. The Verizon Wireless filing cautions, "The Commission should not be fooled by the absurd argument that consumers will somehow benefit from porting restrictions."
Verizon Wireless urged the FCC to act quickly - by September 1, 2003 - to make it clear that wireless service providers cannot erect new barriers and hold their customers hostage by making it expensive and difficult, if not impossible, to switch. "Having imposed the LNP mandate," Verizon Wireless noted, "the Commission bears responsibility to ensure that it is implemented effectively so that it can achieve its goals for competition and consumers."
About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless is the nation's leading provider of wireless communications. The company has the lar
What exactly is a number portability fee on the phone bill if there is no number portability ?
This reminds me of the article in last week's New York Time Magazine about endemic low level corruption in Mexico. It's there because when push comes to shove, ordinary people are willing to pay the bribe rather than put up a fuss.
The same is true of the differently styled, but just as pervasive fraud that dominates the US telecom industry. Every one of the readers of this post knows in their hearts that if they take that phone bill and scan down it, they can find fraud with in a page. But they draw a line through the fraudulent charges, pay just the rest, then eventually (a year or so) they will get their phone cut off for non payment. But principles of law, legality, and etc. just aren't as important to the average person as they make out them to be.
I'm amused by our friends across the pond feeling bad for Americans because they don't have number portability? But do our friends with the silly accents realise the sorry state the US is in when it comes to mobile telecom in general?
Let's begin. The carriers here have no concept of a SIM card. Most phones are CDMA and are firmware locked to the provider. There are only two GSM networks I know of, T-Mobile and AT&T. Tri-band phones from these places cost as much as a Yugo. In addition, AT&T "provider locks" their expensive tri-band phones to only work on AT&T, and will not unlock them, not even for a fee (AT&T, if you're reading this, there are places online that unlock your phones for $20 or less, so screw you). T-Mobile unlocks your phone within 72 hours of being on contract, which is decent, however. Oh but should you wish to get a newer mobile from them, you have to resign a 1-2 year contract...
Oh yes, the contracts! Wait til you hear about these! Everyone's on contract here, because it's too expensive not to be. So here's how it works. You have this allotted quantity of minutes you pay a fixed monthly fee for, then you pay exorbitant rates (40c+ a minute) if you use them up. These quantities are decent, for example, T-Mobile offers 600 minutes, free nights, free weekends, and 500 SMS for $43 (27 quid) without tax. Nice eh? Umm, no, little do you realize how backwards the billing schemes are here. For one thing, minutes from that "600" get deducted for every incoming call. Even SMS get deducted for every incoming SMS sometimes. And 1 second rounding? Try 1 minute rounding. And if you don't use all your minutes in a month? *poof*, gone. Cingular's trying rollover, but since they're not GSM, they don't count. Oh, and should you wish to add or remove the number of allotted minutes to your plan, you have to resign a 1-2 year contract, with a termination fee in the $100 or $200s.
So in short, who gives a crap about number portability? How about we get reasonable plans and GSM phones which take SIM cards, before we worry about switching providers and keeping our numbers? What would you rather do, keep your phone when you switch carrier, or keep your number when you switch carrier? Especially since a decent triband costs hundreds of dollars?
*blinking cursor*
Cricket has decided it start charging <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Aug/08182003/uta<nobr>h<wbr></wbr></nobr> <nobr> <wbr></wbr></nobr>/84909.asp">customers 55 cents to get a printed bill</a>? What's up with that? You are now getting charged to get a bill?
Private corporations are not the only entities guilty of trying to exploit vague language about "just and reasonable" fees. Government agencies do it, too.
When Colorado passed a state-wide standard for issuing carrying-of-concealed-weapons (CCW) permits earlier this year, the bill clearly stated that
CRS 18-12-205(2)(b) (emphasis added).
I got my permit a month before the bill was signed into law, and it cost me $138.
The same sheriff's department is now charging $152.50:
(emphasis in original. FYI, "CBI" is Colorado Bureau of Investigation).
Not only did the fee increase, but they now only accept applications two days a week, instead of during any normal business hours, as was the case before.
Let's get the system implemented first, and then
we can fight over whether the surcharge is too
great.
This just in....companies out to make a profit!! :)
... the profit motive is one of a dozen motives that human beings operate from, and our propensity for elevating it above all else, and claiming that is a good thing under all, or even most, circumstances has blinded us to numerous problems it creates, catastrophes it has caused, and better solutions it cannot offer. Monsanto's profit motive killed people in a small southern town in the United States during the 1990s, when they dumped toxic chemicals into the ground water. The fact that smoking gun memos were found detailing how they would deal with the PR fallout if and when the behavior came to light managed to get them in the news briefly ... until Enron, WorldComm, and 9/11 came along. No one in jail for murder, business as usual, and we still think the profit motive is a good thing for humanity. It isn't ... it is a good thing for creating and selling trinkets, acceptable for food production when it is not corporatized, and appalling beyond belief for delivering medicine.
;)) and is ready to impose regulations if they really get carried away.
... well, one can't even call it a slap in the wrist. A tap on the shoulder, perhaps.
... regulation of these out-of-control industries is sorely needed. The problem is undue influence wielded by these companies and organizations over our government ... a problem which must be resolved if we are to preserve and restore our democracy in any meaningful sense, and one which requires, as its first step, the election of officials who will support meaningful campaign finance reform.
... indeed, they only accelerate and exacerbate the problem.
... and if all forms of bribe
And this just in
Ok, maybe it seems like they want to make an excessive profit. Don't like it? Well, it looks like the gov't already has a watchful eye on them (if that's any comfort
Except that the republican and democratic FCC is in collusion with the telecom cartels, so rather than enforcing regulations, they are dismantling and, in the case of the requirement for last mile copper availability to competitors with reasonable and fair terms, ignoring and refusing to enforce them altogether (goodby Sprint ION 8mbit DSL service, but Ameritech will gladly sell you overpriced 512k/128k service instead). Similiar to how the Republican DOJ refused to enforce the Sherman anti-trust laws against Microsoft after their democratic predicessors had convicted Microsoft of abusing their monopoly, instead deliberately snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and giving Microsoft
To be fair, were the republicans to go after the movie industry for their collusion, or the recording industry for theirs (and almost certainly obtain a conviction in either case), the democrats would probably pull the same nonsense, undermining the rule of law as well.
The problem isn't government regulation
Which is a very long shot, given past failures, and why I believe the United States has begun its final political and social decline. Libertarian ideas of replacing a dysfunctional democracy with corporate and capitalist plutocracy (which is what you get when you have fundamentally non-democratic, indeed feudal, corporations or priovate companies excersizing more clout over the people than an elected government, however dysfucntional that elected government might be) are not a solution
Massive deregulation isn't the solution. A deregulated free market ultimately yeilds a monopoly, which becomes unassailable and ultimately even less effecient than the old, defunkt eastern block planned economies.
What is the solution is a restoration of the people's influence over government, and that can only be achieved through campaign finance reform in a manner that prevents corporations and organizations from buying politicians. At least legally
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
BTW: Cingular is GSM and TDMA at least in the tristate area...
But I agree with what you are saying about the locked phones...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
No, what the carriers actually profit from is misleading their customers into thinking a roaming call is "in network" via a very subtly different on-screen display (thanks, SunCom!) leaving their customers with an obscene phone bill. However, given that these customers most likely will not renew their contract, perhaps the carriers will simply burn in hell (a fitting end, I think).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
With time, and efficiently allocation of the telephone numbers to companies, this will be possible, in a slightly different form:
(999)555-1236--fax
:-)
(999)555-1234--landline
(999)555-1235--moible
Can't do it exactly with the prefix, but could with the, umm...suffix.
(I do meet people who do have phone numbers in order like that incidentally.)
The bigger question is how you ever got to talk to a person?
When Claire...the happy automted Sprint PCS minion asks "how can I help you today" you reply "cancel service."
Little factoid: Claire runs off of SCO. (I know the company they outsource to.) They are working to migrate to linux though, and may have by now. (This was a while ago.)
I have Cingular GSM. You don't have to sign a contract to change minutes or plans. Only if you upgrade your phone do you have to sign another contract, but that makes sense since they're subsidizing the phone. For some reason their salespeople desperately want you to get a new phone every six months, but I always decline.
There's a flip side to being charged for incoming minutes. Why should the caller pay extra because you chose to have a cell phone rather than a landline? That's not his problem. It burns me up that when I call friends in the UK I have to pay their cellphone bills! ($0.35/min mobile, $0.03/min landline.) Are you charged differently for e-mail depending on whether the recipient uses mutt, Hotmail or Outlook?
It sucks that I have to pay $0.10 for incoming or outgoing SMS, but Americans just get around that problem by avoiding SMS. It's not something I miss.
Earth to wireless carriers: we don't want 3G! We don't want color screens! We just want reliable voice service at a decent price. So quit wasting money on features we didn't ask for. It's like the telcos pushing caller ID and voicemail: I didn't ask for caller ID, and my answering machine works fine.
I didn't know about Cingular GSM. Good to know though. Both AT&T and T-Mobile (the two I've had most experience with) generally require contract resigning for plan or minute changes.
...
*grin* I respect your incoming minutes opinion, but there's a second flipside. Does your ISP charge you everytime you receive an email? It's not fair for the caller to have to pay more to call a mobile than a landline, but isn't it less fair for the recipient to have to pay for a call he may not have even wanted? I hope that "Do Not Call" list works
But to back you up, mobiles have a distinct prefix abroad, vs the US where the same area code-exchange-4digit format is used. Abroad you know you're calling a mobile, not so in the US. Damn dilemmas.
*blinking cursor*
Why not just have your land line call forward to your cell phone, and tell people to call your land line number?
The major problem with this is that in many areas of the USA, the local telegraph company calling areas are so small that your cell phone number may end up being an expensive intra-LATA call from your landline phone. If this is the case and you enable call forwarding from your landline to your cell phone, then you will have to pay the per-minute toll charges for every incoming call to your cell phone.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
Do some research.
Cingular and AT&T are TDMA/GSM hybrid networks. Cingular has decent GSM coverage in the Carolinas -- T-Mobile roams on Cingular (free of charge) while in the Carolinas. However, I hear that much of Cingular's coverage is limited, and AT&T has more of its TDMA areas covered by GSM. AT&T and Cingular sell GAIT phones, which support GSM, TDMA, and AMPS.
T-Mobile is all GSM. In areas where T-Mobile doesn't have coverage, T-Mobile can roam on parts of Cingular's and AT&T's networks, along with many smaller regional operator's networks (e.g. West Virginia Wireless).
T-Mobile will let you change your plan while in contract, as long as it's a normal plan (not a promotional plan, which is only available to sign up for during the length of the promotion). Also, they will let you buy new phones WITHOUT extending the contract - however, you probably won't pay the prices listed on www.t-mobile.com for some phones. For example, T-Mobile lists a price of $99.99 for the Sony Ericsson T300, with a $100 mail in rebate.. As a T-Mobile customer of 5 months with good credit, I could buy it for $130 (that's with a $50 discount). Remember, cellular operators subsidize the cost of the phones they sell..
T-Mobile doesn't even offer 2 year contracts. All of their contracts are 1 year. And if you want to bring your own phone (or with some stores, pay the full unsubsided price for the phone), you can pay monthly without a contract.
I went on eBay and purchased this same phone new (battery, accessories used) for $107.50 including shipping. When I got it, I put my SIM card and immediately I could use it.
The current CDMA 1xRTT technologies deployed by Verizon and Sprint PCS are more advanced than the GSM/GRPS deployed by Cingular, ATTWS (AT&T Wireless), and T-Mobile. GRPS can't compete with the speed of 1xRTT for wireless data services.
CDMA phones can have SIM-card like functionality, called URIM. However, this is not used at all in the USA. AFAIK, Sprint cells one phone with this functionality but disables it.
Personally, I like the USA cellular billing scheme. Otherwise, you'd have to pay a lot for outgoing calls.. which I make the most with my phone.
and even worse, in areas where sprint provides PCS (wireless) and local service, they put cellular and landline numbers in the same exchange - so there is no way to determine the difference.
Oh, and should you wish to add or remove the number of allotted minutes to your plan, you have to resign a 1-2 year contract, with a termination fee in the $100 or $200s.
Verizon doesn't do this. You can change your plan any time. It's one of the features of their service that they advertise a lot. You can check how many minutes you've used in the current month by dialing *646 (which doesn't deduct any minutes); if you're afraid of going over, you can call them and immediately go up to the next plan level. You can go back to the previous level for the next month with no trouble too.
Personally, I think the "sorry state" of US mobile telecom is far better than the sorry state of US landline telecom. Talk about backwards... You have to pay extra for every feature, like caller ID, call waiting, etc., which has been around for years and is completely standard on any wireless service. Some parts of the country still charge extra for touch-tone service!!! And to top it off, just about any way you cut it, a landline will end up costing you more per month than a good cellular contract, after you add in all the taxes and fees, and the long-distance charges (which are free for cellphones).
1. Not likely at the rate we keep ADDING fax lines to our main fax server. Yes there is lots of electronic transfer of info, but most of our customers still need a hard copy in their hands and faxing is the most efficient way of getting it to them.
Why not ... call forward
i can do this... I'm considered to be an odd duck because I read my phonebook's information section. To be honest, I never inquired about passive call forwarding, to be honest it was never listed in my phone book and I didn't want to deal with the pesky humans.
However, other people can't do this, or don't think about doing it, or you bring it up to them and they'll get around to it and don't actually bother doing it.
Why shouldn't I do this? Well had they actually offered a seperate prefix or area code for mobiles in the first place, they may not have needed to split the area codes up in the first place.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Is that they make a hell of a lot more money scamming people for smaller amounts of cash (not small even, just smaller) over a unlimited period of time than for 1-time-fees over a possibly smaller period of time.
One trick is however, that with number portability competition will theoretically increase. So, you can always move your connection to a cheaper cell provider, and/or one that doesn't charge for the "ability" to switch.
Personally, I think it's asnine, as you're paying for the ability to switch your number to another carrier should you be dissatisfied with the current one. When I switch cars I pay a flat fee for insurance switchover, and many other things work this way - why do US phone companies get to pull this BS?
<rant> and thank gawd I'm Canadian... and wish half our major industry wasn't run by American corps...
FAX should be dead, dead as a can of spam. You would *think* in this digital age that people would rather go with e-mail which even for monochrome graphics is likely to be faster then 9600/14400 fax
even on a typical dialup connection. But I see more common then anything else people taking ye'old data/fax modem and automating the process of faxing.
Hardcopy is still the prefered media for the storage of records, and for some bizzar reason there seems to be some assurance that placing that paper in the fax machine is somehow more more legit then sending a digital graphic image via e-mail. If not more legit, a fair bit easier and certainly more reliable as physical fax machine requires no maintance except for print/printable media.
VoIP service does exist, even in america in the form of 10 digit dialing. While I believe in the future you may indeed beable to contact someone via a url rather then a phone number, I also think that for legacy reasons that digit dialing isn't really going to go away any time soon.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
There are cascading effects at work. Because we pay for incoming minutes, telemarketers are prohibited from calling us. I've never received a telemarketing call on my cell. Paying for incoming minutes bothers Americans less than paying for minutes at all. I refused to get a cell phone until 2001 because I didn't want to pay "long distance" rates for local calls.
The wireless operators originally had to be self-funding because they are (relatively) unregulated private companies, so they couldn't charge back their costs to the landline network, especially since mobile phones were seen as obscure yuppie frills in the early years, not something non-users should subsidize.
The area code issue isn't really a dilemma. Putting cell numbers in standard area codes was possible only because the "cell phone user pays" concept was already a done deal. A few cities have in fact pushed new cell/fax/pager numbers into an overlay area code to prevent a geographical code split. I much prefer the convenience of having area codes geographically based. Washington State has a good system. There used to be one code for the west half and another for the east half (or "wet side" and "dry side" as we say). Now the west has four while the east still has one, so can tell at a glance whether a number is Seattle, north/east suburbs, south suburbs, rural, or eastern Washington. Very convenient. They were going to add a shared overlay across the whole west side, but fortunately the dot.com boom crashed before that was implemented.
There's another cascading effect too. If I'm visiting somewhere, people there have to dial my home number, so they pay long distance even though I'm in their city.
"First incoming minute free" used to exist in another context but I've forgotten what. A few cellular providers are starting to offer it, to take care of the undesired calls problem. Last I saw Cingular offered that for $5/month, and for another $5 you can get unlimited SMS, but I wouldn't use either of those enough to make them worth it. But there is a poor man's version. Because caller ID and voicemail is standard, if you don't want the call you press Cancel and it stops ringing and goes immediately to voicemail. You can do that with all unrecognized numbers if you want.
You should see if they offer a free roaming plan. It works wonders if you're on one. The problem I have every month is trying to stay under my minutes. There's no easy way to check them and it seems they're always delayed. The company I'm with has developed software that allows you to keep track of your minutes as well as SMS, MMS, and GPRS data. The software runs on specific smart phones as of now, but we're working to port it to all open platforms. Feel free to check it out at www.dashfly.com.
Although Australia is backwards, in this case i think we are forwards, and everyone else is backwards. *nods*
Cellphone number portability has a lot in common with health insurance portability. Neither one is going to happen.
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
I did plenty of research, thank you very much, so stop twisting my words. I wasn't aware that Cingular was GSM (second time I said this) and whether AT&T or T-Mobile are all or part GSM is irrespective, as long as they support GSM in some areas and therefore their tri-band handsets (were they to be unlocked) would be compatible with service abroad.
I also wasn't speaking about only T-Mobile in particular during my rant, just a general overview of the state of US mobile telco. As for purchasing a new phone leading to an extension of contract, of course I was referring to getting it for advertised rates from the provider. Otherwise I could just buy an unlocked triband online, which I did, same as yourself.
As for the new contract thing on T-Mobile, I recently changed my plan from an old one to the 600 min one I mentioned. Yes, they would let me change my plan to the new one without a contract, but whereas new customers would get free nights for life, I would have to pay some $3-$5 a month for them (recurring as long as I was with them). In addition, the free 500 SMSs a month I had on my old plan would be lost. The only way for me to get what a new customer was being offered was to sign the same contract the new customers had to sign, otherwise I'd be ripped off month after month. I didn't have to sign a new contract, no, but I would have paid for it had I not done so. Repeatedly.
*blinking cursor*