back to article Should Europeans pay to receive phone calls?

A new report commissioned by the EU recommends the abolition of termination fees, the proportion of call costs which is paid to the receiving network, on the grounds that the internet survives without them and the internet is going to be everything, anyway. The report (summary: pdf), conducted by the German telecoms research …

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  1. Cris Page

    TPS isnt a BT service!

    @Graham T - The TPS scheme is not and never has been a BT service, - BT link to it but it is in fact run by the Direct Marketing Assocation. BT do little or nothing to help its hapless customers avoid intrusive calls from various sales operations EVEN WHEN TPS registered, unless of course you count the premium charged anonynous call rejection service which really should be available as part of the select services package. In fact even when companies abroad try to circumvent the system by spoofing UK geographic numbers, BT claim to be powerless to intervene. Apparently it is beyond the wit of thier network software people to create an routine that queries incoming calls to ensure they are coming from an authentic UK area code/ number

    As for how wonderful the US cell phone charging system is, this is the same system that robs pay as you go customers of any credit remaining whe it is time to "top up" while blocking their phone even to incoming calls as happens on a friends PAYG cell in Iowa? As a UK PAYG customer, I prefer our system, I accept that I should pay the full cost of making a call that I decide to make, and would probably use my phone less if I knew my friends had to pay some of the cost of my calling them. and of course any credit remaining on my top up date remains mine to use.

  2. Eugene Goodrich

    'Merkin phones, and nothing about the article and the termination fee

    Goldstein has a good description of the way things are around here. I would only add, from my neck of the woods (kind of the Seattlish area), the following:

    * finding someone without a cellphone (as we call them, even though they don't use cell networks as such anymore) is difficult. Basically they have to be over 70 years old, under 12, or homeless, else they have a cellphone.

    * most cellphone "plans" include free long distance calling anywhere in the country, anytime; the minutes get used up like normal but there's no extra fee for the long distance aspect. Also, most plans don't consume minutes outside of business hours, more or less. The carriers seem to be like banks: they charge you a monthly fee for whatever it is you're doing, and they make some extra on the side for incidentals if you want to use the newest (to them; not necessarily to the world) fun tricks or you make a mistake and call more during the days on weekdays than your plan provides.

    * nobody I know thinks of their "minutes" as payment to place a call, or payment to receive a call. We all think of it as payment to talk on the phone. And we have a choice about that: if we can't afford to talk for some reason until the end of the month, we restrict our placement _and answering_ (and/or duration) of calls. But Goldstein explained that everyone just gets a plan with enough minutes to hopefully cover things.

    * around here you really can have good luck not getting any solicitation calls, even without a do-not-call list. I've gone five or so years without one such call. I wouldn't be surprised if if floods once it ever starts to rain, though. Then I would have to make a hobby of asking solicitors for their identifying information, and telling them not to call me back, ever again, and keeping this in a spreadsheet so if they did I could get money from them; I think even a second call after being told off gets them some heavy fine. I don't know but I sure hope the fine goes to me! :)

    * our payment system is not perfect. The subscription model definitely causes some complaining, but it's not the end of the world, and it has been slowly improving, not worsening.

    * our phones seem to suck worse than European phones, due to carrier pressure to suck, apparently. There are exceptions to this, depending on what you want to do with your phone. And we got the iPhone first, dintwe? ;)

  3. joe

    us calling

    For the past four years, I have been using T-Mobile prepaid as my only telephone. If you add your minutes in units of $100, you get 1000 minutes, so $0.10/minute to make or receive normal domestic calls - no monthly balance deduction, and the minutes are good for a year. It doesn't matter what network they're on or whether it's a land line or a mobile - it costs me $0.10/minute either way. Over that time I don't think I've gotten a single "spam" call. Charities and politicians _can_ legally call you, but they tend not to since calling people and costing them money tends to elicit a hostile reaction, which isn't generally what they're looking for.

    The carriers have a pretty good incentive to go after people who are spamming their customers - they might make a bit in per-minute charges on it, but they'll lose a lot more in time spent dealing with irate customers demanding something be done about it, and calls to 611 (customer service) are free. :)

  4. Playjam

    @Fred Goldstein

    Austrian PAYG phones may have high incoming charges for the networks but this is not passed on to the consumer. For PAYG you currently pay €0.069 to all networks, all networks have similar offers. Monthly contracts are even cheaper, which can cost as little as €15 and you get 500 minutes for free, after that €0.03 per minute to all networks.

    We have family and friends options and same network for free and other restrictive and confusing contracts here as well, however most people I now go for the cheap and anonymous PAYG or the monthly flat rate option.

    In my opinion the U.S. American way of billing is complicated and the European simple stupid "I call I pay" has kept the cost down significantly.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Phone termination payments

    What a good idea abolition of these would be. If I am away in Europe on a break and I receive a call I am expected to pay the coupling charge upon receipt of my monthly bill but why should that be the case? I do not mind paying for calls I make but I strenuously oppose paying for calls which others make to me. Likewise, I oppose the use of so called "national numbers" by companies in order to have their phone bills paid, often at premium costs. Do these extra payments appear in their annual accounts as taxable income? We all know the answer to that I am certain but why should this be the case? I always believed in equity and still do so but I despair of the versions of that rare commodity in British life today.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    US prepaid and postpaid

    Fred and Eugene seem to have fallen for the cell companies' advertising - buy a big bucket and don't care about the minutes. The problem is that the average cost of the minute is not e.g. $65/1000 = 6.5 cents, but much more as you either have unused minutes or are hit with high overage charges (think $0.2-0.5 per minute). T-Mobile's pay-as-you-go is the only reasonable plan, and not just for "credit-challenged", but also for people who don't feel like blowing $40 or more a month on minutes they can't fully utilize. Plus the monthly plans also have other BS charges added and 2 year contracts, while pay-as-you-go has crystal-clear billing.

  7. Jon Hewson

    North America: Free Local Calls

    My understanding is that free calling originated when groups of farmers set up small telephone systems that were operated by a farmers wife.

    Calls between these systems - 'long distance' - were charged for as the interconnection was by a Third Party.

    These small systems were gobbled up by the interconnecting telephone systems but the free local calls remained.

    No billing systems were available back in those days, anyway.

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