[asterisk-biz] Mobile calling in Europe

[Trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 21:23 +0200, randulo wrote:
> In France, calls to a cell are usually expensive (depending on your
> phone service). On the other hand, the same call is free to receive
> even on pay as you go service like Mobicarte.
> 

make that in europe.  Most countries have special mobile exchanges and
mobile/geo numbers are not portable across each sphere.  The countries
that do allow you to port a geo/mobile back and forth like the US and a
few other places, also have the same cost to call either.

In europe largely the mobile carriers wanted gobs of cash for
termination costs, this is not that dissimilar to the way that the RBOCs
did things in the 80s after the AT&T breakup, they wanted $0.25/min or
so largely to get people that were competing.  Then when the clecs
started popping up more in the 90s they argued that the fees are too
high and the FCC initially said "woah hold on there a minute for a
decade you have been saying the fees arent high enough" and rejected
this argument initially in the dialup internet issue, which the argument
was changed to the call terminates at the web page not the modem to
avoid the very fees that the carriers wanted as long as the flow was
going in their direction.

I am starting to see more carriers in europe charging lower rates
between the two, there is one provider in IE that has free calling to
other mobile phones, some landline ones are doing unlimited deals, and
in NL there is one that is free to call a landline number that lets you
do a prepaid calling thing.  Its changing but its changing slowly, as
long as customers are willing to pay and there isnt sufficient
competition for the lower rates they will continue to charge as much as
they can get away with.  

> The cheapest price range would be around 12 to 15 euro cents per
> minute, where as most plans are now unlimited from voip services to
> fixed lines. If you pay a high monthly fee via cell, you may get cheap
> calls to the same provider.
> 

Enter the gsm gateway device :)  Receiving is free, and some providers
give free calls to the same network (O2 iirc is doing that in many
places, vodaphone is as well at least in some of their footprint).  Why
I have even heard of real telcos here setting up mobile numbers for
terminating calls that way and they werent mobile licensed so they
eventually got shut down but raked it in while it was up.


> I always remember when I asked someone in the USA, "but you pay for
> calls you receive, right?" and the answer was "No, just minutes."  As
> if "minutes" were free.
> 
Yeah that is another big difference, to receive a sms or phone call is
totally free, in fact you can do that with a prepaid phone with 0
balance (although tmobile NL stops the free email->sms gateway at a 0
balance regular texts go through).  But then culturally people dont seem
to mind calling a premium number to buy a product here, where in the US
if it isnt a tollfree you can expect sales to drop for direct marketed
goods (like time life music compilations, something I am sure is
advertised on both continents).

Culturally people here in general dont think about, know the
transmission costs, or much care about the costs, it is what it is and
they make calls because they need/want to talk to whomever.
-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
Belfast +44 28 9099 6461        US +1 516 687 5200
http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you!