Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: limtex who wrote (20677)	12/30/2000 10:17:31 AM
From: John Walliker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

limtex, GSM Roaming Charges - British based mobile customer...Current rates:_... Which network? John

To: limtex who wrote (20677)	12/30/2000 11:16:04 AM
From: Geoff Goodfellow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

this is not much different than the way it was in the US before NexTel and then AT&T with its one-rate, sprintpcs, etc got into the no roaming fee's competition. when cellular started in the US, you just used to pay the visited systems local air-time rate (peak & off-peak). the fee's varried all over the map -- and it paid to see what each carrier was going to charge before you roamed to a distant city. but, i suspect few people checked, or perhaps complained that the fee's per minute were different at each carrier, so... then the cellular network providers started to get GREEDY in the guise of "simplicity", and started to charge one HIGH per minute rate (like 75 or 99 cents) with no off-peak discount. they might get the minutes from the visited systems at each carriers local-rate, but they pocketed the difference between say the 40 cents peak or 20 cents off peak and the 75 or 99 cents per minute the customer got billed. many many people either left their mobile phones at home when they travled or only used them for absolute emergecy calls. then some bright person decided to become EGREGIOUSLY GREEDY and started tacking "daily fees" on to these consistently high per mminute fees, something like 2 or 3$ per day. i recall driving to new york from Washington DC once, playing and receiving calls along the I-95 -- to be "cell shocked" at the end of the month with all the daily fee's i racked up during that one day of travel. then, NexTel came along and said, let's get rid of roaming fee's (as well as long distance fees, another thing the greedy cellular carriers socked you with when you roamed). if you bought a 100 bucket of minutes in your home market, you were able to take advantage of them when you roamed - and any overage was charged at your home per minute overage rate. GSM land is going through the same thing: your home carrier gets billed by the visited system at its peak/off-peak per minute rate and usually tacks on a 20% or 25% "gouge" on top. so, as a result, most carrier have roaming information pages that let you price-shop before you travel to see what the rate is (to bad the web didn't exist when this was the case in the early days of cellular, i always had to get a list mailed to me of the current rates before i traveled). you now see some GSM carriers going to the one flat HIGH rate per minute plan. some also, like the ones you listed, are egregiously inflating the visited systems air-time prices. this is very short sighted on them, as it only results in a cell-shock experience when the customer gets their monthly statement and discourages roaming use in the future. one way that people have managed to get around all this egregious gouging and marking up of roaming air-time fee's is to simply get a pre-paid SIM card upon their arrivial. here at the Prague airport, the GSM providers have kiosks soon as you clear customs. the loser of course, is your home carrier, they ain't gonna get a twopence from your roaming experience, which is, as it should be! geoff goodfellow