OT - Cellphone billing

[Ian Petersen]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 11:24 PM, William Muriithi
<william.muriithi-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>  I have for long noticed a billing difference between America system -
>  USA and Canada (Not sure about the others as I haven't visited them)
>  that is really different to that in Europe and Africa.  When A call B,
>  in Americas, you charge A and B. In Africa and Netherlands, you only
>  charge A unless B was roaming when he/she received a call.
>
>  Now, I am not whining and don't expect Americas to adopt other
>  countries' systems, but what logic is used to explain the above?  Is
>  there like a history about it, because that is all I can think of.
>  Imagine someone sending you a letter and the post office decided to
>  charge both the recipient and sender? I understand the issue with
>  metric and English units, other quirks, but dude/dudets, this one
>  don't make much sense, in my opinion.

I don't know if there's a history behind it (besides the fact that
phones here have traditionally been run by a monopoly and the
relatively new competition isn't much competition) but I think the
justification is that even though B didn't initiate the call, B still
has to use the cell company's resources to receive the call--B is
paying for "airtime".  If a cell calls a land line, only the caller
pays and, conversely, if a land line calls a cell, only the receiver
pays.  There might be a better system (and there are certainly cheaper
options compared to Canada), but the system we've got is at least
pretty consistent.

Ian

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