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Comment by kilburn | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me that most of you don't question the fact that you (north americans?) are paying to receive phone calls. Here (Spain, but I think it applies to all the euro zone) we just do not pay to receive calls, which seems much more sensible to me.

How would you feel if some random mailguy knocked at your door and when you opened it he threw a package at your hands and immediately charged you for (part of) the delivery? This is exactly how charging to receive phone calls feels to me!

How do telcos justify this to you? What's the reasoning behind it?

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I'm not from the US, but I have worked with the US telecoms industry. The original reason for this was due to the numbering plan. In most countries a special 'area' code was chosen for mobiles, however in the US they decided to just allocate mobile numbers in the existing area codes (NPAs). At least in the early days of cellular it cost the providers more to connect a call to a cell phone and so someone has to pay it. In a numbering plan where it is possible to tell a number is mobile just by looking you can put that cost onto the caller, but if it looks like a landline then the caller would feel hardly done by getting charged extra. So that extra cost was put onto the cell phone user accepting the call. This is hearsay from colleagues so may not be 100% accurate, but it makes sense to me.

> but if it looks like a landline then the caller would feel hardly done by getting charged extra

This was a tricky bit of grammar but I believe it's 100% correct.

Well, it's supposed to be "hard done by", but that doesn't make it much better. I'm personally pleased to see a more sophisticated way to phrase something, but unfortunately it's not a common idiom these days (at least state side), so it can be a little confusing.

In what way is it "more sophisticated"?

You can migrate your landline number to a cellphone plan in Europe. There is no way to know whats on the other side when you are making a call.

But I believe it's only been possible since the days of VoIP where it has the same cost to the provider.

I own a little telco provider and for some time I had a landline UK number as my primary number on my cell phone - it's definitely possible and easy. The only reason I went back to a mobile number is that some web forms insisted on entering a mobile number and wouldn't accept my "landline".

Not in every country in Europe. UK for instance you can't (is that considered Europe now?).

You can't even keep your landline when you move house.

> You can't even keep your landline when you move house.

You can if its within the same exchange area.

So not really.

Yes UK is in Europe and I think will be for the next few million years - oh you meant the Political body - the European Union. Oh yes we're still in that and will be for a few years at least.

As to the landline number, you can keep your landline number if you don't move into an area where the phone numbers 'region' code is not applicable.

Just like I am sure that is the case for every other country in the world (or thereabouts).

I am curious to know with regard to USA phone numbers where I cannot tell a mobile from a landline by just looking at the number (e.g, UK Mobile numbers can be identified because they are 07xxx numbers) but US mobile numbers look like landlines and have the same area code.

Can you move to a different state and keep your number even if the area code for that state is completely different?

Yes, and many people do. Hence this comic: https://xkcd.com/1129/ (the first three digits being the area code).

Edit: keeping my number when I moved also made it really easy to filter out these phone calls. Any number calling me from my old area code that I don't recognize is either a spammer or a wrong number. Any number calling me from my new area code is probably legitimate.

Well with BT which is the national provider in the UK you can't keep your landline number when you move if you are moving to another exchange (which is most likely).

This isn't true anymore since pretty much all the wireless carriers in the US offer unlimited voice minutes (and often SMS as well) as their standard postpaid plan.

True, but presumably your carrier is still paying for the call. If the transaction were reversed, then the robocaller or their "carrier" (or whatever the equivalent is in robocaller land) would have to pay, and the profits would crumble.

If I'm X telecom company and I want to inject a billion roboscam phone calls into AT&T's mobile network, I'm going to pay them for that privilege.

These phone calls are no longer expensive, generally speaking, which is one of the reasons it is now cost effective.

The access tandem is where long distance calls are switched into the local phone network for a given LATA. Local phone companies and long distance providers all buy into the same access tandem in order to connect into the geographically fixed market. When calls are switched across an access tandem in the US, it's the initiator of the call that is billed per minute. The receiver at the other end of the tandem switch may pay a fee to the switch operator to receive the RECORDS of which other company initiated a call in to them. That way, they know who to go after and bill for each incoming minute! Tandem operators typically don't provide this info during the call signalling, even though they could.

As you can imagine, per-minute call billing is not always settled between tandem players. They can block each other based on company ID alone, and often this requires cooperation from the tandem operator as well. Some of the per-minute rates are incredibly high. The flat-rate long distance phone providers are obscuring the fact that some areas are extremely high-cost to terminate. This system has sprung into high per-minute cost billing in high-cost areas (rural LATAs) so that people operate free dial-up (in the 90s anyways), free phone conference lines, and even "free international calls" all taking advantage of the incredibly high per-minute rate by billing the maximum rate permitted in their LATA (typically not higher than the highest per-minute tariff posted by the incumbent local monopoly).

This highly regulated old-school system seems so antiquated in the face of the Internet, but it survives because the tandem is the one place where all providers can interconnect, and this turns out to be the hardest part of the puzzle to work around. In the age of the internet, we could come up with something better :)

This is a great point - and was the primary idea behind charging for sending email by the message to combat spam. Someone years ago proposed that if we just charged 5 cents per message sent, most people would pay less than $5 a month while spammers would have to pay millions of dollars of the course of a year, making the business unprofitable.

You could probably charge 0.1c and it would still work. But maybe make companies more aware of what to send. Every Amazon order automatically causes 4 emails (ordered, dispatched, out for delivery, delivered). If fulfilled by Amazon even 5 because then the seller will ask for a review a week later.

I don't mind this at all. Amazon's emails are hardly on the list of annoying robo-emails. They actually deliver useful information.

Right, but amazon wouldn't send them in a world where they pay to send. Email would cost Amazon millions of dollars each year.

Of course not, but they shouldn't. They let me modify my email preferences and choose which emails I receive. I am happy paying $20/year for email storage.

The caller also may have to pay, depending on their arrangement with their carrier. Having the receive pay or not pay has no bearing on that.

People on prepaid or pay as you go plans don't get unlimited minutes. You can't really just dismiss this segment of the population. It's a bit like saying "coffee is a free beverage for everyone because most offices provide coffee for employees."

I suspect people on extremely limited plans know to screen their calls or manage in some way.

If not that is unfortunate but hardly justification to upend cellular calling because a few people paid $0.10 / minute extra answering calls from spammers.

There are advantages and disadvantages to those types of plans, and that is one of the disadvantages.

As far as I know all of Verizon's prepaid plans offer unlimited talk and text.

Sure I can. Many pre-paid plans also offer unlimited minutes, and even in the case of those that don't, you can absolutely just choose not to answer the phone if you don't recognize the number, or just flat-out don't feel like answering.

Look, I get that the US is different in that it charges for incoming calls, and that's weird to you. That's fine. I think it's weird that Spanish people voluntarily let themselves be chased by enraged bulls, but hey, I let people choose the risks they want to take[1]. Would I prefer free things over not-free things? Sure. But that's the model that US carriers chose, and, absent government regulation to the contrary, it's absolutely their right to choose that model. And I honestly just don't care enough about it to lobby the gov't to change those regulations, and it seems that a majority of Americans feel the same way, so... so what?

[1] Modulo unethical treatment of the bulls themselves, but that's another issue.

As others have already pointed out, carriers nowadays mostly do flat rate voice service. When cellular bandwidth is more limited cellular carriers did usually have per minute charges.

It wasn't actually receiver pays. It was each person pays their phone company for carrying their end of the call. It didn't matter if you were the receiver or the initiator.

Note that this is the same model that is used in most of the world for internet service. I've never understood why people find it weird to use that model for phone service but not for internet service.

> I've never understood why people find it weird to use that model for phone service but not for internet service.

I think its because an internet connection has to be initiated by you at which point you give your consent to be charged for it. On the other hand you can get a phone call from anyone really without you previously agreeing to paying the cost of the call.

>I think its because an internet connection has to be initiated by you at which point you give your consent to be charged for it.

This isn't true. You still get charged for random stuff scanning you over the Internet (unless you are behind NAT); or even worse, being on the receiving end of a DoS.

hmm most SOHO ISPs charge a flat monthly/yearly rate, so that point doesn't really stand.

The converse is that in Europe the caller pays (or used to pay?) more based on whether they're calling a cell phone or a landline. Why should I care what kind of phone the person on the other end has? That seems like their burden, not mine.

This whole line of argument is about ten years stale, anyway.

The upside of cellphone calls being more expensive in the EU (or at least in my country) is that this makes mobile telemarketing calls much less convenient, to the point I can't remember the last telemarketing call I received, if I ever received one on the cellphone. OTOH, my land phone stays disconnected 24/7 because of telemarketers.

The only mobile telemarketing calls I receive are actually from my phone company. Whenever someone calls me and upon, answering, they say the magic words "Mobilcom-Debitel" (the company's name), I immediately hang up without saying anything else and block the number. They change numbers about once a month, though.

When I was in Europe 15 years ago it amazed me that people there asked if I had a cell phone: friends told me they were not going to call me on my cell phone (work provided with a Europe number) because they were caller pays and they didn't want to pay that much. Do you still have such a strange system where you will refuse to call someone because you pay who knows how much?

In truth caller pays makes some sense in a world where call time is expensive. However the world is different: call time is dirt cheap. Caller pay means (unless of course the government steps in) that you have no idea what you are going to pay for a call and thus don't make them.

Last I heard in the US the average person pays twice as much [per month] for their cell phone plan, but in turn they talk on their cell phone 5 times as much.

Look at this way, do you have a set of free numbers (like 0800 or some prefix)? Every country has a prefix of free numbers, prefixes for local call numbers nationally etc. Basically you know how much you're going to pay for calling someone based on the number you dial.

Yes I agree if you don't know what you are going to be charged just by calling is wrong. But that's not the system, calling a specific set of prefixes let's you know what it's going to cost. So calling a mobile you know it's going to cost more since it had a mobile prefix.

Calling international costs more because of a prefix.

I have free calls to anywhere in the US, Canada or Mexico. I can call any number in any of those 3 countries and talk as much as I want for no extra charge. (except for a few pay per call "services" but that is not a phone fee that is the caller collecting the money and easily blocked). For a small fee I can get the same for both "cell phones and land lines in 30 countries"; and land lines in 70 countries. The reason I don't get cell phones cell phones in those 70 countries is they are caller pays.

Once again, caller pays used to make sense. However now it is just a money making scheme for cell phone companies that hurts those of you who have it.

You're confusing call for free vs calls included. You're not calling people for free, your calls are included. You are paying for your calls with your monthly fee. I don't see how you can't see that and think you're actually calling for free.

If you went to a payphone for example, you could dial free call numbers (and know they are free by the prefix). The point is that you know what you will be charged based on the prefix.

You're not calling for free, you're paying a subscription and your telco has included a bunch of prefixes under that plan.

> Once again, caller pays used to make sense. However now it is just a money making scheme for cell phone companies that hurts those of you who have it.

You haven't actually put forward any argument for this statement. How does receiver pay make any sense at all? The receiver is already paying for his number by keeping his plan active (either a monthly subscription or with pay as you go you have to top it up regularly to keep the number). Caller pays makes more sense. Especially in the world we are in where people are using calls to make sales. If you call me to sell me something, why should I pay for that call. It's your call, you pay for it.

That's like saying we should pay for the gas used by door to door salesmen. We already pay for our house (which in analogy is our phone number). We shouldn't have to pay for people coming up to our door.

Here in America, we drive on the right side of the road, which is the only logical way and totally not just an arbitrary thing that seems right to me because that's what I'm accustomed to. I always wondered, in countries that do it the other way, how do the governments justify that to their people?

That's a terrible "analogy". The logic of "don't pay for events that you have no ability to control" is apparent to everyone, as is the arbitrariness of road direction.

You don't pay when the phone rings. You pay once you decide to answer it and the call is established. That requires positive action, so you certainly have control.

I could just as well say that being able to receive calls at any location is a great convenience, so the logic of paying for that is obvious. But I won't, because there are a lot of different ways to see it, and none is obviously right or wrong.

>How do telcos justify this to you? What's the reasoning behind it?

They spend big on politicians, for even bigger profits. Just look at the mess our Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is creating with Net Neutrality at the moment (and for the last few years, over-and-over).

Nearly all of the crap that consumers have to put up with in the states is due to lobbyists, and the telecom industry doesn't cut corners in that department.

If you are roaming (for example, you take your Spanish mobile to the UK) and receive a phone call (from a friend in Spain) you pay for that (because your friend can't be expected to know you're abroad).

Not anymore. At least between the 28 Europe Union members. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/roaming

Not exactly, you can still get charged if you spent the majority of your time in the last four months abroad.

I realized I wasn't clear: they can start charging you, not charge for calls already made :)

The relevant rule: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/faq/frequently...

But that's not the point. Take a country where this doesn't apply as example, then.

This always seemed weird to me when texting someone. How am I to know that this will cost me a euro for 160 characters instead of being free, when it's to a national number, just because they chose to have a holiday in Bangladesh this weekend?

But as for the receiving end, paying for receiving calls and texts only applies during holidays. It's not the standard case so whatever. Apparently that's different abroad.

It's either a paltry amount of money to accept a call, or completely free (unlimited talk). Data is what costs the real money.

What kilburn is referring to is that the business model that telco's use more or less stimulate this type of calls.

If a telemarketeer has to pay for setting up a call, rather than the end-user for accepting it (no matter how small the charge is), then placing millions of automated calls all over a sudden start costing money to the marketeer.

Think of it: the caller has the will to talk to someone - why should (at least in the past) this someone pay for that? The Euro-zone does it the other way round: you want to talk, you call, you pay.

Either way, in both situations with call volumes going down and people switching to data-type connections you see the price of calling/receiving calls drop sharply and as listed above the money telco's make comes from the data plans.

> If a telemarketeer has to pay for setting up a call, rather than the end-user for accepting it (no matter how small the charge is), then placing millions of automated calls all over a sudden start costing money to the marketeer

They do have to pay money; initiating a call isn't free.

The receiver has to pay a tiny amount of money if they're not on an unlimited plan, but it's so small that it's not worth considering separately from the annoyance of receiving these calls in the first place.

That's easy for you to say.

Back when I didn't have any money my phone budget was $8 a month. Minutes 10 cents a piece, IIRC. People didn't really text very much back then but those were 10 cents a piece as well. Each dime mattered to me very much.

There's also people with plans that only allow X minutes a month.

what makes you think we pay to receive calls? there are different service plans but the vast majority of them are either flat-fee unlimited calling, or they bill you to make calls (prepaid minutes, for example).

Pretty much all minute based plans in the US charge minutes for both outgoing and incoming calls.

At this point most people pay for Data and not Talk time on cellphones

Regulatory capture.

You should probably ask before doing that (subtle backhand, with the self-tout).

Most North Americans are not paying to receive calls.

"It's free. Just $49.99/month"

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