Long distance call

Just like landline calls, long-distance calls on cellular phones cost more than local calls. Long-distance charges on a wireless phone generally cost $0.10 to $0.25 per minute. The boundaries are different, however. Cellular home areas might be 10 times larger than a landline local calling area. A person calling from Vineland, New Jersey, to Philadelphia is subject to long-distance charges on a landline phone. Because both cities are in the same home area, a call on a mobile phone is treated as home airtime and is essentially a local call. But a cellular call from Vineland to Pittsburgh would be subject to long-distance charges in addition to home airtime charges.

Save money on wireless long distance
Cellular long distance is not as competitive as landline long distance, so callers do not have as many ways to cut the cost. Most users do have a few choices, however. First, call your carrier directly and ask for lower rates. Carriers usually have two or three different options. If you are still not satisfied, you can look into other long-distance carriers.

Many of the wireless carriers allow you to use a different company for landline long-distance. Your wireless provider can tell you which long-distance carriers are available. For example, Ameritech Cellular allows its Michigan customers to choose long-distance carriers such as WorldCom to carry the calls. If you already use WorldCom as your landline long-distance provider, your cellular long-distance charges can be billed on your long-distance bill.

Caller ID and calling party pays
Few things are more frustrating than having a phone solicitor call you on your cellular phone. They read their sales script to you, and you have to pay for the call. Most digital wireless phones are able to use caller ID. Your phone displays the number of the caller when your phone rings. If you do not recognize the phone number, you can refuse to answer the call. Screening out unwanted calls is the main purpose of caller ID. By avoiding these calls, you do not have to pay for them. Another way to reduce the cost of inbound calls is to use a fairly new feature called calling party pays.

Calling party pays is a so-called advanced feature, and wireless companies charge a monthly fee of $2 to $5 a month for this service. Once you have signed up for calling party pays, callers cannot reach you by directly dialing your number. If they dial your normal wireless phone number, they will hear a recording that explains that you have enrolled in a caller-pays program. In order to reach you, they must hang up and redial using:

1 + area code + your mobile number

The additional dialing is intended to tell callers this is like a long-distance call—they will pay for it. The caller is normally billed $0.25 a minute, and the charges appear on the caller’s local telephone bill.

Most businesses that use a lot of intracompany calling are better off without calling party pays. With the plan, their wireless bills are lower, but their local telephone bills will increase. With calling party pays, they pay $0.25 to call their own employees, who are in the field using wireless phones. If they cancel this plan, the call is billed on the wireless phone bill as home airtime. If the user has not exceeded the number of home airtime minutes included in the rate plan, the call is essentially free. Otherwise, the call will be billed under normal home airtime rates, which are always lower than calling-party-pays rates.

Full minutes or partial minutes
When shopping for a new wireless service provider, one should consider how the carrier bills the call time. Cellular calls have traditionally been billed in full-minute increments. A 2.5-minute call is billed as a 3-minute call. In the late 1990s, Nextel started billing in 1-second increments. The customer is only billed for two-and-a-half minutes for a 2.5-minute call. Most wireless phone calls are very brief, so the billing increment significantly impacts the actual monthly cost of a wireless phone.

Free first minutes
When PCS service was new, some carriers gave the first minute of a call at no charge. The free first minute was designed to stimulate more calling volume and, therefore, more revenue for the carriers. To find out the impact of the free first minute, simply look at the number of calls you made in a given month. The first minute of that call would have been free with a different carrier. Subtract the number of first minutes from your total airtime and recalculate the bill.

Free nights and weekends
Some carriers offer free nights and weekends for a flat fee of approximately $10 each month. Look at your call detail and add up the current cost of night and weekend calling. If it is regularly more than $10, you should sign up for this discount plan