PAT: Please delete my email address - THNX!
Steven Lichter wrote:
> I know that when I first got mine, if you let it ring more then 3
> rings Pacific Telephone Cellular (later AirTouch) would charge you as
> it would if you let a busy tone go too long. I remember calling one
> of our switchroom numbers which was set for no supervision and getting
> charged for the call as well as a couple of times being dropped off
> since the originating switch was looking for supervision and when it
> got none it would timeout, that was before SS7 and when there was
> still a "C" lead in the switch.
I assume you're referring to outbound calls FROM your cellphone, and
getting billed by cellco (AirTouch, for instance) on such incompleted
calls from your cellular phone.
But the question here, is how cellcos will "supervise back" to the
originating carrier (whether landline or wireless), on calls to an
"unavailable at the moment" (or roamed out of the service area)
cellphone numbers! In theory, the calling party (regardless of whether
they are landline, cellular, calling card, coin, etc) should NOT have
to pay for reaching such an "unavailable or roamed out of the service
area" recordings when calling TO a cellphone. But even with SS7, many
cellcos will cause a charge condition back to the calling party,
though this won't happen in all cases. And it is not consistant even
within the same cellco. Some of their switches will cause a charge
condition back to the calling party, some of their switches will NOT
charge for the call, within the same cellular provider!
Anthony Bellanga (anthonybellanga@gonetoearth.com)