Sample mobile telephone bill

Sample mobile telephone bill
Figure 1 is an example of a typical wireless telephone bill. The fictional user has a Telephone Company D phone in the St. Louis market. Mobile phone bills have three sections: cover page with payment coupon, account summary, and the call detail. In this particular bill, the customer pays $50 per month for access and gets 500 minutes of free airtime. Additional airtime costs $0.10 per minute. The plan also includes “first incoming minutes free.” This customer is paying $3.25 for “handset replacement insurance.” If the customer damages the phone, Telephone Company D will replace it. The replacement plan may carry a deductible.


Figure 1(a): Sample mobile telephone bill: page 1.


Figure 1(b): Sample mobile telephone bill: page 2, account summary.


Figure 1(c): Sample mobile telephone bill: page 3, phone charges.

This customer has a couple of options to reduce this monthly bill. First, the customer is paying for the 500-minute plan but only used 291 minutes. If Telephone Company D has a 250-minute plan for $25, the bill could be reduced by about $20. Another way to reduce the bill is to cancel the $3.25 monthly fee for “insurance.” Mobile phones rarely need repairs; so as long as the customer is not tough on the phone, this plan is a waste of money. The customer also had 60 minutes of calling to an 800 number. This airtime could be eliminated altogether if the user would use a landline phone, such as a payphone. If the calls were made while driving, this option is not feasible.

Cellular service : Number portability, 3G, WAP

Number portability
In the 1990s, the FCC mandated that the wireless phone industry must implement a number portability system. Historically speaking, cellular phone numbers have not been portable. If a user changes from Bell Atlantic Mobile to Sprint PCS, she has to get a new phone number. The old number is recycled by Bell Atlantic Mobile and Sprint PCS assigns the user a new number.

This process is so frustrating that most customers simply stay with the current carrier, rather than experience the “pain of change” to a new carrier. Getting a new phone number may require a business user to print new business cards and new letterhead, and the user must inform his clients of the new number. Few people are willing to go through this headache just to save a few dollars each month.

Third-generation technology
Telecom suppliers worry about the capacity of their networks. If the network is maxed out, they cannot enroll new customers, and existing customers switch to different carriers. New technologies are implemented to increase network capacity and allow carriers to offer more sophisticated services to their customers. The next significant wireless telecommunications technology is referred to as “the third generation.”

Three 3G technologies have been developed, but none has yet been deployed. The three technologies are WCDMA, CDMA2000, and TD-SCDMA, developed by Americans, Europeans, and Chinese, respectively. Governments, telecom manufacturers, carriers, and other power brokers are still deciding which technology to deploy. 3G is often in the news because of the high-level negotiations deciding the future of the wireless industry, but until it is deployed, 3G is not very relevant for the end user.

WAP
WAP allows mobile telephone users to send and receive electronic data. WAP has been heavily marketed by carriers, but the service has had a rocky start. The service had many technical glitches, and the technology’s early adopters lost their enthusiasm. WAP’s biggest drawback is that it is not user friendly. Data input is inconvenient, and most customers cannot tolerate the tiny display screen.