5 ms·

Paying for incoming anything is completly ridiculous. Thankfully that's unusual here in Europe.

rogerbinns 12y ago
Do explain how you get screwed on mobile termination rates! Mobile phone calls are considerably more expensive in Europe per minute, but you as a recipient may not realise it. See my comment that points to a post with more details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075829
- faster 12y ago
  More expensive to whom? When I lived in France I paid 20 Euro per month for unlimited everything, including international calls to over 100 countries. As a subscriber, my per-minute rate was not of any concern to me since there wasn't one.
  - rogerbinns 12y ago
    Did those unlimited international calls also include to international cell phones? Cell phones are usually excluded because the termination rates are so much higher as my calling card screenshot showed. Edit: I looked up free - a well known French ISP. Guess what - they have free calls all over the world to landlines, but charge for mobile - http://www.free.fr/adsl/telephone.html http://www.free.fr/adsl/telephone.html
- stephenr 12y ago
  This just sounds like typical "America is the best". Yes, in every other country, the person making the call has to pay (unless its specifically a free call service). How does it make sense that someone can call/text you and it costs YOU money? The supposed "difficulty" in understanding call rates to me sounds like the same "difficulty" that keeps you lot off the metric system. But sure, keep telling us how the rest of the world is wrong - it doesn't make you look self obsessed at all.
  - rogerbinns 12y ago
    BTW I am a Brit and think the US is dysfunctional in many ways. What you are paying for is not the incoming call getting to your carrier, but for your carrier to then connect to your phone using radio (or whatever). Same for outgoing calls. To flip it around, when I call YOUR number, why should it be relevant to me how YOU choose connect to the phone network? Why should I care if you use cell, satellite, machines in the exchange, a piece of string, copper or whatever else comes along in the future? If the US wanted to use separate area codes for mobile then it could only practically be done by making the area codes longer. This would be a massive disruption. What solution would you propose? Are you seriously saying that people should understand at least 36 different random unrelated area codes to cost more? And that people who can't do that are inferior and just being difficult? Because in other countries they did things like make mobile area codes always start with 7 - ie only one rule to remember. As for metric, yes I agree the US is dysfunctional there too. As is Britain which still hasn't adopted it for the roads. But I do have a proposed solution: http://www.rogerbinns.com/blog/gplus/i-finally-have-a-solution-for-the-number.html http://www.rogerbinns.com/blog/gplus/i-finally-have-a-soluti...
    - jameshart 12y ago
      Well as a Brit you should know how you make more room in the phonenumber space: awkwardly, slowly, in a series of steps, and with a huge amount of disruption. But a few years later everyone's forgotten about it. This is in spite of the fact that in order to get from where we were to begin with - with '01' as the area code for London, for example - to where we are today, peoples' numbers went first through the 071/081 split, then through the 'add 1' 0171/0181 era after phONE day, and then finally moved over to the 0207/0208 codes, as a foundation ultimately for London having an 020 area code.
      - rogerbinns 12y ago
        In Britain it was relatively easy as there was only one phone company, plus the one in Hull. Britain already had variable length area codes and numbers, so it wasn't as disruptive. (I was very amused to find one place where the area code was longer than the number!) The US & Canada had far more companies, plus NANPA 3/7 format being hard coded everywhere - forms, computer programs etc. Trying to implement changes to phone number length will make y2k efforts look trivial. Heck when places started requiring the dialling of area codes because "local" areas especially big cities had more than one, was disruptive enough. That started happening in the mid-nineties. Given the choice between huge disruption, or termination fees being the same and the costs of connecting between the phone company and the person making/receiving the calls being their business, the latter isn't an unreasonable choice. When I call you, why should it be relevant to me if you are connected to your choice of carrier by a piece of copper, fibre, radio waves or whatever else?

Do explain how you get screwed on mobile termination rates! Mobile phone calls are considerably more expensive in Europe per minute, but you as a recipient may not realise it. See my comment that points to a post with more details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075829

faster 12y ago
More expensive to whom? When I lived in France I paid 20 Euro per month for unlimited everything, including international calls to over 100 countries. As a subscriber, my per-minute rate was not of any concern to me since there wasn't one.
- rogerbinns 12y ago
  Did those unlimited international calls also include to international cell phones? Cell phones are usually excluded because the termination rates are so much higher as my calling card screenshot showed. Edit: I looked up free - a well known French ISP. Guess what - they have free calls all over the world to landlines, but charge for mobile - http://www.free.fr/adsl/telephone.html http://www.free.fr/adsl/telephone.html
stephenr 12y ago
This just sounds like typical "America is the best". Yes, in every other country, the person making the call has to pay (unless its specifically a free call service). How does it make sense that someone can call/text you and it costs YOU money? The supposed "difficulty" in understanding call rates to me sounds like the same "difficulty" that keeps you lot off the metric system. But sure, keep telling us how the rest of the world is wrong - it doesn't make you look self obsessed at all.
- rogerbinns 12y ago
  BTW I am a Brit and think the US is dysfunctional in many ways. What you are paying for is not the incoming call getting to your carrier, but for your carrier to then connect to your phone using radio (or whatever). Same for outgoing calls. To flip it around, when I call YOUR number, why should it be relevant to me how YOU choose connect to the phone network? Why should I care if you use cell, satellite, machines in the exchange, a piece of string, copper or whatever else comes along in the future? If the US wanted to use separate area codes for mobile then it could only practically be done by making the area codes longer. This would be a massive disruption. What solution would you propose? Are you seriously saying that people should understand at least 36 different random unrelated area codes to cost more? And that people who can't do that are inferior and just being difficult? Because in other countries they did things like make mobile area codes always start with 7 - ie only one rule to remember. As for metric, yes I agree the US is dysfunctional there too. As is Britain which still hasn't adopted it for the roads. But I do have a proposed solution: http://www.rogerbinns.com/blog/gplus/i-finally-have-a-solution-for-the-number.html http://www.rogerbinns.com/blog/gplus/i-finally-have-a-soluti...
  - jameshart 12y ago
    Well as a Brit you should know how you make more room in the phonenumber space: awkwardly, slowly, in a series of steps, and with a huge amount of disruption. But a few years later everyone's forgotten about it. This is in spite of the fact that in order to get from where we were to begin with - with '01' as the area code for London, for example - to where we are today, peoples' numbers went first through the 071/081 split, then through the 'add 1' 0171/0181 era after phONE day, and then finally moved over to the 0207/0208 codes, as a foundation ultimately for London having an 020 area code.
    - rogerbinns 12y ago
      In Britain it was relatively easy as there was only one phone company, plus the one in Hull. Britain already had variable length area codes and numbers, so it wasn't as disruptive. (I was very amused to find one place where the area code was longer than the number!) The US & Canada had far more companies, plus NANPA 3/7 format being hard coded everywhere - forms, computer programs etc. Trying to implement changes to phone number length will make y2k efforts look trivial. Heck when places started requiring the dialling of area codes because "local" areas especially big cities had more than one, was disruptive enough. That started happening in the mid-nineties. Given the choice between huge disruption, or termination fees being the same and the costs of connecting between the phone company and the person making/receiving the calls being their business, the latter isn't an unreasonable choice. When I call you, why should it be relevant to me if you are connected to your choice of carrier by a piece of copper, fibre, radio waves or whatever else?