In message , at 11:50:36
on Wed, 26 Jan 2011, David Cantrell remarked:
I often feel that people have been lulled into a sense of false security
by so many "bundled minutes" plans on mobiles (and fixed line phones
have them too these days). The underlying cost of mobile calls is *much*
greater than landline ones, that's just something we have to live with.

But there's no reason why calls to 080 numbers can't at least be
included in bundled minutes, aside from profiteering on the part of the
mobile phone company.

OFCOM is currently consulting on proposals to make 0800 free from
mobiles.

I don't see any reason why calls to 0845 numbers can't be included
either, perhaps with a multiplier so that each minute of call "costs" 2
bundled minutes, or whatever, if the costs involved really are so much
higher than calls to, for example, other networks' mobiles (which *are*
included in bundled minutes).

From my time in the mobile phone industry, the charging scheme tends to
be built around what the billing system will allow you to do. So having
different "consumption rates" of bundled minute is probably not
something they can cope with - otherwise it would probably have been
done by now.

Again, that I have to pay eleventy squillion pence a minute looks like
profiteering, on both the part of the mobile phone companies and TfL.

All calls cost almost zero, on a marginal cost basis. What ends up on
the price list is a complex combination of amortising network build
costs, what other operators charge you at the interconnects, and what
the market will stand.
--
Roland Perry