OT - Cellphone billing

[James Knott]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 10:37:43AM -0500, William Muriithi wrote:
>   
>> This is what I have found in any other country I have visited beside N
>> America.  Communication cost can get really low as just paying the
>> minimum fee to retain the number active. And as long as you have some
>> money on the phone, the numer is your for an year.
>>     
>
> Here it can cost $5 per month to have voice mail service.  There it is
> included free in your anual minimum use cost.  Of course voicemail
> really costs the company nothing if they already have the equipment so
> the $5 per month is pure profit.
>
>   

Why would they already have that equipment?  A company buys equipment 
with the idea of generating revenue with it and that same equipment has 
to be amortized over several years.  Where does the money to amortize it 
come from?

>> Do you think this will remain true if 802.16e ever establish itself?
>> And is anybody other than the 3 old companies getting into 802.16e
>> here in Canada? I am very confident 802.16e will be the dorminant
>> technology in developing countries, but how it will work in developed
>> countries is little hard to figure out.
>>     
>
> Perhaps what is needed if you want sensible prices is that you have a
> nationwide GSM network and any company that wants to provide service can
> use it as long as they pay their share of the maintainance costs of the
> network.
>
>   

We already have that.  Any GSM vendor, other than Rogers/Fido is someone 
reselling services from Rogers.  Is there anyone reselling CDMA from 
Bell or Telus.  Back in the days before Rogers bought them, the 1st GSM 
network was Fido, which was owned by Microcell.  Microcell also sold 
bulk service to other companies.


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