T-Mobile halves roaming charges
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Depending where you're roaming T-Mobile has cut by more than half charges for business customers who transmit data over its mobile networks in countries where it operates its own network.â¦
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Taking the best from both and still failing to cover the UK T-Mobile and 3 are to combine their 3G radio networks in the UK, increasing coverage for both companies and reducing running costs.â¦
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but winds up costing consumers tens of millions of dollars a year -- is being scaled back by two of the nation&#39;s biggest cell phone carriers.
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UK lobbies for cellcos Roaming charges are set to plummet after European ministers supported plans to cap the fees, but some countries are supporting watered down proposals.â¦
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TechWeb - The legislation could actually lead EU carriers to charge North American travelers higher roaming tolls to make up for lost revenue.
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Verizon Wireless introduced an unlimited calling plan with no roaming or long-distance fees for $99.99 a month, an offer that could spark a price war among carriers.
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Passengers flying from some regional airports are being charged twice for services, an air watchdog says.
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(InfoWorld) - While mobile operators claim to be cutting the cost of roaming, their efforts are just a smoke screen and have no appreciable effect on charges overall, a European consumer rights group has said. The lower tariffs are typically available for a limited duration, sometimes requiring payment of an additional subscription fee, and may only be cheaper for long calls made using certain networks, BEUC, the European Consumers' Organisation, said on Tuesday. The fees should be capped at â¬0.33 ($0.43) per minute for customers roaming outside their home country, consumer groups said . Their demand is considerably lower than the cap of â¬0.49 per minuteÂ proposed by the European CommissionÂ in draft legislation that could be voted by June. Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media,Â announced plans last FebruaryÂ to crack down on mobile phone roaming charges, which she said were unreasonably high. On July 12, the Commission proposed cutting by 70 percent the cost of making and receiving calls while travelling in another European Union member state, saving European consumers â¬5 billion a year, according to the Commission's figures. Under the Commission's proposal, operators will be allowed to charge no more than â¬0.16 per minute for calls received while travelling abroad, â¬0.33 per minute for calls made within the country being visited, or â¬0.49 per minute for calls made back home or to a third country while abroad. However, that's still too much for the consumer groups, which called for charges of â¬0.16, â¬0.25 and 0.33 per minute, respectively. The French Consumers' Union (UFC - Que Choisir) called for national telecommunications regulators to collect more information about the volume of incoming, outgoing and local roaming calls, and the wholesale prices charged by operators for each type of call. Without such statistics, it's difficult to measure the effects of tariffs and policies, the group said. Regulators and consumers are dependent on figures provided by the GSM Association, which represents 700 mobile phone operators, the French group said. Those figures showed that the cost of making roaming calls in Europe fell by 25 percent in 2006, from â¬0.83 per minute to â¬0.62, the GSM Association said on Feb. 8. The price decline shows that regulation, especially of the retail market, is unnecessary, the Association said. In the absence of independent measurements of the market, BEUC and UFC - Que Choisir commissioned their own economic analysis in order to determine what they consider fair price caps. Limiting charges to â¬0.33 per minute will stimulate demand, and so have no adverse effect on operators' revenue or profit, they said. Based on mobile phone bills supplied by Members of the European Parliament, they calculated that lower charges could save MEPs an average over â¬1,000 each per year. European telecommunications ministers are expected to discuss the Commission's proposed regulations at informal meetings alongside the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, next month, while the European Parliament will vote on the proposals in April. Germany, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has announced its intention to push the legislation on roaming prices through by the end of June, when its term of office ends. Â
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By Vicki Lee Parker, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.  Sep. 10--An e-mail is making the rounds that warns people not to dial area codes 809, 284 and 876 because their accounts will be billed $2,425.
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(InfoWorld) - T-Mobile USA Inc. came out the biggest spender in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's Advanced Wireless Services spectrum auction, which ended Monday. Participants bid a total of nearly US$13.9 billion on 1,087 licenses to offer 3G (third-generation) mobile services in areas across the U.S. The auction began Aug. 9 and went on for 161 rounds. The radio frequencies could be used for services including data, voice and video on mobile devices. The auction is the first of two that should roughly double the amount of radio spectrum available in the U.S. for mobile services. The FCC is also preparing to auction frequencies around 700 MHz that have been used for TV broadcasts. Moving those to mobile use could take years. T-Mobile is playing catch-up against bigger carriers in introducing 3G services. Its bidding company, T-Mobile License LLC, had the winning bids on 120 licenses and will pay almost $4.2 billion for its spectrum. All told, the licenses it won could reach almost 475 million people, a number greater than the U.S. population. There was a wide variety of licenses up for auction, ranging from local to regional coverage. The five biggest bidders, led by T-Mobile, represented the country's biggest cellular companies. Cellco Partnership, representing Verizon Wireless Inc., came in second place with $2.8 billion in bids for 13 licenses. SpectrumCo LLC, representing Sprint Nextel Corp. and cable partners, bid almost $2.4 billion for 137 licenses and Metro PCS AWS LLC bid almost $1.4 billion for eight licenses. Cingular Wireless LLC, represented by Cingular AWS LLC, came in fifth with bids of more than $1.3 billion for 48 licenses. Overall, more than half of the 104 winning bidders that participated were certified as small businesses, according to the FCC. The agency put 1,122 licenses up for auction. The unsold licenses will be made available again in a future auction. The winners need to make down payments within ten days after the FCC puts out a public notice on the close of the auction. In the same time period, they have to submit long-form applications for the licenses.
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The European Parliament voted to impose retail price caps on roaming charges, fees that mobile phone consumers pay when making or receiving calls outside of their home calling zones. The European Council of Ministers, which has already endorsed the plan, is scheduled to approve the price caps formally June 7. As early as August, the charges will be limited to 0.49 euro (66 cents) a minute for outgoing calls and 0.24 euro for incoming calls, excluding tax.
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British Telecom is criticised for charging customers Â£4.50 extra each quarter if they do not pay by direct debit.
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The Federal Communications Commission said its wireless spectrum auction ended money, netting the U.S. Government a record $13.9 billion. T-Mobile led all bidders with $4.2 billion bid across 120 licenses.
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Roaming rates in the EU are set to drop as the bloc agreed to move toward placing caps on what carriers can charge to traveling consumers, despite the protests of the wireless industry.
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(InfoWorld) - T-Mobile USA planned to launch its converged Wi-Fi and cellular service nationwide Wednesday, following theÂ introduction of the serviceÂ late last year in Seattle. The service lets users of a special mobile phone make calls over Wi-Fi from their homes as well as T-Mobile hotspots. Users can also make regular cell phone calls when out of range of a hotspot. Calls hand off between the two networks if a user moves from their home, for example, beyond the range of their Wi-Fi network. T-Mobile has been working on this service for around four years, said Mike Selman, T-Mobile director of marketing. The company began the project after asking customers what would make them give up their landline phones and rely only on their mobile. The answer they most commonly gave was that the phone had to work better in their home, he said. Because cellular networks often don't work as well indoors as outside, T-Mobile is using Wi-Fi to provide better service to customers in their homes. For now, customers can choose from a Nokia or Samsung phone. Each costs $50 with a two-year contract. Customers can use any access point, but T-Mobile encourages them to use either the D-Link or Linksys routers it offers. The access points, which are free after a mail-in rebate, come loaded with software that gives voice calls priority, helping ensure better quality. T-Mobile customers must have a cellular plan of $39.99 or more in order to sign up, and then must pay an additional $19.99 per month for unlimited local and long-distance calls from the hotspots. A family plan that includes up to five lines costs $29.99 per month. T-Mobile is also offering an introductory rate that doesn't expire. Customers who sign up while the offer is valid will pay $9.99 for one line and $19.99 for up to five. Users can also opt to have their Wi-Fi minutes count the same as their cellular minutes under a regular plan, and not pay the additional monthly fee. If a cellular and Wi-Fi network are both in range, the phones default to the lower-cost Wi-Fi network. Also, when users move from one network to the next, the call is billed based on which network started the call. For example, if a user begins a call on the cellular network and then walks into their home, even if the call is transferred to the Wi-Fi network, the entire call will count against their cellular voice plan. Users can make phone calls from any of T-Mobile's 8,500 hotspots across the country, located in Starbucks coffee shops and other locations. The phone automatically connects and authenticates at the T-Mobile hotspots. In many cases, customers can also use other hotspots. If the hotspot has no security, a user can connect to it and make calls. However, if a hotspot employs a browser redirect page that requires a user to agree to terms, the user won't be able to connect. That's because the available phones can't display HTML Web pages. Users can also type in a password to connect to a secured Wi-Fi network. Thomas Hagan, a T-Mobile customer in Midway, Georgia, who tried the service for four weeks, said he had no trouble using the phone in hotels, a local bookstore and his corporate Wi-Fi network. He found it very easy to set up the router in his home and connect to the phone to it. Overall, he was impressed with the call quality over the Wi-Fi network and didn't have any problems with calls dropping when transferred between the cellular and Wi-Fi networks. "The phone was a little larger than my existing phone, so that took a little getting used to," Hagan said, although he added that he ultimately took to the phone. Customers can only choose from two devices and they're both low-end flip phones with limited functionality. T-Mobile relies on technology called Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) to offer the service. On June 18, Cincinnati BellÂ launched a similar UMA service in its region. Operators including OrangeÂ in Europe have also launched the converged services.
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LUXEMBOURG -- EU governments agreed to cut the cost of using mobile phones abroad Thursday, paving the way for a cap on roaming fees later this summer.
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The T-Mobile unit of Deutsche Telekom and the Pannon GSM unit of Telenor said Wednesday that they had won licenses to provide high-speed mobile phone service in Hungary, but analysts said they might have paid too much in their effort to stay ahead in the