how do cell phone plans work outside the US?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Pat Farrell wrote:-- Sorry for all the non-US members of Java Ranch, I don't have any idea how the rest of the world does cell phone data plans

Me neither, but I'm curious. So starting a new thread.

How do cell phone plans work? Flat rate? Per minute? Per byte? Include text/web/calls/nothing?

[Vikas Kapoor]

Just to start, in India, in most cases incoming calls are free.

but marketing strategies of US cell phone companies need to be changed in India if they launch especially below two otherwise companies will fail.

- After 7/9 PM call are free.
- Weekend minutes. (More than enough)

Why they would fail? I do not want somebody to call me Russel Peter.

[Ulf Dittmer]

There's generally a base plan which includes a limited amount of talk time (maybe 50 or 100 minutes per month), and then you'd have a wide variety of options you can buy on top of that, like unlimited talk time on weekends, unlimited talk time on weeknights, unlimited talk time to a few particular phone numbers, unlimited talk time to land lines (which are priced cheaper than calls to cell phone), unlimited SMS etc. Options abound, though - some carriers have plans with nothing included that come at 5 or 10 bucks per month, but then charge for each outgoing call. Incoming calls and SMS are always free.

Except for highend plans (like if you get an iPhone), you need to get a data plan in addition to that. Those mostly don't charge per byte, but throttle the bandwidth to 2G speed after you've used up a certain amount of traffic. Cheap plans may do that after 200MB per month, the more expensive ones maybe after 1GB or 5GB.

[Anil K Chandra]

Indian carriers also have per second billing. I use a 1 paise per second plan. So if I talk for only 10 sec, it costs me 10 paise (about 0.22 cents). Very useful if you make a lot of short duration calls.

[Chris Baron]

T-Mobile's plans for the iPhone in Germany using the Google translator
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.t-mobile.de/iphone/tarife&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dt-mobile%2Biphone%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26prmd%3Dnslv&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhhT4pool5hyWkD6R_cmyPqmvBCjPw

[Pradeep bhatt]

In India billing is per minute or per second. Rate depends where you are calling. It is cheaper to call within state than outside of state but many cellphone providers have a uniform call charges across the country. I am using the old per minute billing one as I don't want to change my number.

[Jesper de Jong]

I have an iPhone, with 150 minutes per month phone time, 150 free text messages, unlimited mobile Internet. That costs € 30 per month (about US$ 37). If I use more minutes or more text messages, I pay per extra minute or message. I don't talk a lot and send text messages a lot, so this is more than enough for me. You can also get more expensive plans for the iPhone with more minutes and messages.

I guess most plans work that way here (the Netherlands) - usually you get a certain number of minutes / messages for a flat rate, and anything you use more costs extra per minute or message.

There are also prepaid phone cards here - you buy a prepaid card for for example € 15 or € 30 and then you can call or text until you've used the credit.

Incoming calls are always free, but there are some annoying text messaging advertisement things that try to get you signed up to their "service", you pay for text messages that you receive from them, and they try to make it hard to find out how to sign off from the service. Companies that do that have been warned by the telecom authorities recently.

There are usually no bandwidth use limits on Internet connections (whether mobile or on a fixed line) here in the Netherlands. In other European countries that's different, for example many people in Belgium complain about the bandwidth limits that seem to be common practice over there.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Jesper Young wrote:Incoming calls are always free

We need that here in the US! If a telemarketer or wrong number calls you, it comes out of your minutes.

[Pat Farrell]

Pradeep bhatt wrote:It is cheaper to call within state than outside of state but many cellphone providers have a uniform call charges across the country.

Moving a bit OT, this is MD after all, we used to have a similar pricing model for land lines here in the US. Calls within a single state were at priced set by the telco and the state bureaucracy. Calls that crossed state lines were "federal" and subject to a different bureaucracy and prices. Its only been 20 or so years that the interstate calls have decreased from insane pricing to being cheap, and now, unlimited within the US is fairly common.

The fundamental idea that phone charges should vary by distance is more than a little quaint.

As is the claim that there need to be separate prices for voice, txtmsgs, and data. Its all data over the network.