[asterisk-users] Nomination for Coolest App in 2007

[Brad Templeton]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 09:37:45AM -0500, Steve Totaro wrote:
> 
> Another interesting (from an American's perspective anyways) is that
> inbound calls on cell phones are free.  Even if you buy a SIM with a
> little pre-paid time and use up the time, you can still receive inbound
> calls for free for a couple months.  

Inbound calls on cell phones outside North America are alas, not
free, though people pretend they are free.   They are "caller pays
for airtime."   The only free incoming call systems I have seen
are some mobile to mobile free call plans, and a small number of
North American mobile plans that, for a flat monthly or daily
fee, offer free incoming.

The caller-pays system found outside North America is, in
my view -- though I know some differ -- one of the last, great
curses of old world telephony on our new environment.
With my VoIP terminators, I can call most of the world's
landline's for a price so low I think of it as free,
with one exception -- the damn caller-pays cell phones
which cost over an order of mangitude more because the 
fact that the payer doesn't negotiate the price removes
the competition that would normally drive the price down.
(And has driven it down in the receiver-pays countries.)

However, for people in those countries, the bluetooth
module does seem like a good idea.  Obviously in places
with no landlines, but also in places with these bizarre
prices, so that if you call one mobile from another mobile,
it's cheap, but if you call from a SIP terminator, it's
25 cents/minute.