Proponents of calling party pays believe the service will both generate more airtime and increase the number of incoming calls, but they don’t agree on how such a system should be introduced in the U.S. market.
“We need some movement along these lines and there couldn’t be a better time than now,” said George Schmitt, president of Omnipoint Communications, which is building a personal communications services network in New York City.
At least 20 new PCS operators are expected to enter the wireless market in the next two to three years. Brand new networks mean brand new customers, giving operators the chance to do things differently, Schmitt said. The U.S. wireless industry needs to break free from the telephone company-like structure it adopted a decade ago and move forward on ideas such as number portability and wireless area codes, Schmitt said.
“I don’t care if no one else in the country wants number portability, I do. And I don’t care if no one else wants wireless area codes. Those who can offer those things should be able to,” Schmitt said.
The reciprocal termination proposal, also called “bill and keep,” now before the Federal Communications Commission would be a step toward establishing new order in wireless, Schmitt said. Comments are due next Monday and reply comments will be taken until March 12.
The North American Numbering Council, once it is formed, also will shape the new wireless world order. The FCC adopted guidelines forming the council last July, but the group has yet to organize.
Schmitt said wireless area codes should accompany the movement into calling party pays service. Most telephone users in the United States understand that if they dial a 10-digit number, they will pay for the call-unless it’s an 800-number-he said. But they don’t expect to pay when dialing a 7-digit number.
“If you don’t make customers dial 10 digits, they have a right to expect it’s a local call. It is easier to do calling party pays with an area code,” Schmitt said. And ideally, that area code would be a non-geographic code specific to wireless, he said.
Source One Wireless Inc. of Illinois says the calling party pays service it offers to paging customers has been enormously successful, without wireless-specific area codes or prefixes.
“With all the new area codes now, like in Chicago here, I don’t know if people will remember one just for wireless,” said Anthony Hawrylicz, vice president of network development for Skokie-based Source One. “And it seems you’d run out of room pretty quickly.”
Source One’s Freedom Page was launched seven months ago in northern Illinois and Detroit. Customers buy a $59 pager, sign no contract and pay no monthly charge. Anyone calling a Freedom Page number is greeted by a “preamble” recording informing the caller their phone number will be billed 25 cents if they choose to send the page. The caller can press 1 to dispatch the page or hang up at no charge.
The system is done with the help of landline operator Ameritech Corp., which provided 10 blocks of new prefix numbers for the project. For each 25 cent page, Source One makes 15 cents, and Ameritech gets 10 cents to handle the billing and number coding.
AT&T Corp. has ventured into both calling party pays and number portability with its AT&T True Connections 500-number service, which was initiated in January 1995.
