*3/15/99 CIO article on IRID. No Price Cap to the Icecap?
idg.net
Wherein our reporter learns that the sky's the limit in
billing for satellite services
WITH ESTIMATES RANGING FROM $1 to $4 a minute
for Iridium service, high-quality satellite phone links to
remote locations seem merely pricey—not outrageous.
But my experience teaches that the escalator can rise to
unimagined heights, even if only temporarily. When billing
for service passes through multiple carriers, funny things
can happen to the cost profile, for which no one seems
able to take responsibility.
My eight-minute, direct-dial call to Ronald Naar in
Antarctica (note to editors: I know, I know, next time he
calls me) appeared on a domestic AT&T Corp. account as
a $520 charge. At those prices, you don't chitchat about
the weather on the ice cap.
Since $520 was more than 10 times what I'd expected, I
called my long-distance provider. After six operators and
an aggregate two-plus hours of time on hold, I concluded
that AT&T seems scarcely to have heard of Iridium and
apparently has no earthly idea how its satellite charges are
computed.
One customer service representative offered to strike
the charge altogether if I promised not to make any more
phone calls "like that." What a deal! But in the interests of
journalism, I declined (editor's note: Thanks, Tracy!).
Another offered to cut the bill a hefty decimal point to $52,
but only after I volunteered that most Iridium calls didn't go
higher than $4 or $5 a minute. The international operator
guessed that the call was billed as a shore-to-ship
communication (about 98 cents every six seconds), and
indicated I'd have to pony up the full amount. Also no
thanks.
Finally, a representative within AT&T's loftily named high
seas adjustments investigative department said she had in
fact heard of Iridium (kind of), that the charge came directly
from Iridium with no markup from AT&T (really?) and that
I'd have to call Iridium myself to straighten out the matter.
This seemed odd. Shouldn't AT&T be willing to sort out the
complex particulars of its own bills?
This was how I became an Iridium Global Customer
Care customer. And I can report that the folks on the
phones live up to their top-notch billing—even if it turns out
they can't do anything about my billing. After dutifully
reminding me that local carriers, and not Iridium itself,
handle bills, each of the three representatives I spoke with
went on to gather information, offered to call AT&T and
Glocall (the corresponding long-distance carrier in the
Netherlands), and generally behaved in a manner that was
simultaneously proactive and sympathetic.
But the company still couldn't fix the bill. It took a phone
call to Kathy Eisenhart, Iridium LLC's executive director for
global customer care in Washington, D.C., to straighten
out the mess. Long-distance carriers like AT&T treat calls
to Iridium phones as if Iridium were a country. Just as
Italy's country code is 39, Iridium's is 881 (all calls to
users of the satellite service start with 881). Those rates
are tariffed, in this case at $6.50 per minute, which means
that my call, in fact, was miscalculated by a decimal point.
Simple enough.
But if the charge originated entirely within AT&T, which
it did, why did the company tell me to go figure it out
myself? Eisenhart advised tolerance. "Don't slam AT&T too
hard," she counsels. "They knew they had a billing
problem with 881 numbers, and it's supposed to be fixed.
But you can fix it one place and not fix it everywhere. It
takes time to get that information out to the customer care
force."
Finally, Eisenhart says, if you're ever worried about the
cost of any call, check it out in advance. "There's a rate,
and it's been set beforehand. Just call up the carrier and
ask for a rate quote." So the next time an Iridium-using
buddy asks, "Hey, can you call me back?" tell him he'll
have to wait a sec.
—T. Mayor
CIO Magazine - March 15, 1999
© 1999 CIO Communications, Inc. |
