Howard Winter wrote:

>>> Yeah but in the US and Canada at least the recipiant has to pay as well
>>> with calls to mobiles.
> 
> Wow, we did away with this a decade or so ago.  The idea of someone else
> being able to make you pay money is anathema to most people.  Just think
> how annoyed you'd be if you received unsolicited sales calls *and* had
> to pay for them!  :-)

Well, what I don't like with the "caller pays" setup is that I (as caller)
have to know which phone is mobile and which is landline (which may be easy
for one country, but can get complicated when calling international) and
that I have to manage several sets of charges (just look at how simple
international charge tables are for calls into the USA and how complicated
they are for calls into countries where the caller pays mobile charges,
like Brazil and Germany). 

Besides, I simply like the US way better: I (as caller) don't have to know
whether the phone I'm calling is mobile or not, I just call and have my
rate based on area code etc. (The "etc" part here is another story :) The
convenience of being mobile is with the phone user -- who is in a much
better situation to negotiate prices with the mobile provider than the
caller is. I'm not sure, but it seems that mobile charges in "caller pays
airtime" countries are higher than in "mobile phone user pays airtime"
countries, because of that.

Gerhard

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