Various Ways We Get Rogered In The U.S. On Mobile Phone Service
I know I’ve been ragging a lot on the mobile industry lately. They make it so easy. Continuing in that vein, a reader commented on my Reality Check: Wireless Service In Indonesia post something I had forgotten about–we pay airtime to call an 800 number from our mobile phone!
With that in mind, here’s a succinct laundry list of ways we are taken advantage of here in the U.S. by our oligopoly of wireless carriers. Regular followers of my blog should find no surprises here:
- We pay for incoming calls–true for most carriers/plans
- We pay for incoming SMS–and don’t have a way to block them other than turn ALL SMS off
- We pay to call toll-free numbers
- If you go prepaid, data service is third world expensive–if you can get it at all
- It took years just to get cross-carrier SMS to work, which is complicated by the fact we had to deal with GSM, CDMA, TDMA, and iDEN at various times. Cross-carrier MMS? Still not entirely cross-carrier.
- We pay what I like to call made up fees for post-paid service. The carriers get regulatory “costs” from the government and break them out as line-item charges to consumers.
- We pay dearly to get out of service contract, though the big carriers have started prorating early termination fees.
- Pay per use SMS rates are up to $0.20, depending on carrier–sending and receiving.
I’m sure there are other ways we are getting the raw end of the deal–I mean other than the ways I’ve listed above. Feel free to let me know in the comments what I missed!
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Comment by Rakesh | Mobile Phone
interesting
but is it true?
Comment by spg
if we really want to fight back i recommend this. encourage everyone you know to use VOIP without any PSTN interconnect. over the last couple years i am actually seeing things go in the other direction. for example skype user are now more likely to see skype as a cheap way to call regular phones rather than a way to call other skyper’s for free. this is partly due to lower connection charges for PSTN calls.
whenever possible CUT OUT THE MIDDLE MAN. put you skypename or SIP URI on your business cards next to your real phone number. i also am starting to believe that ENUM and similar databases are counterproductive since they encourage the continued use of phone numbers belonging to the major telecoms instead directly calling between SIP clients bypassing the major telecoms completely. nearly every ENUM enabled VOIP provider also allows SIP URI dialing as well as peering using numeric codes. if the major telcos were to put traditional phones in ENUM it would be a different story; but that is no where close to happening.
Comment by PhoneBoy
@spg What you’re dealing with here is simple inertia. Phone service is “cheap enough” and works well enough for most people. Sure you can save some pennies by making a call over SIP, but you have to retrain people to call a different way. Not an impossible task, but not one that’s going to happen overnight.