Cheap Phone News » phone companies

Cell Phones and Recycled Phone Numbers

William Teller — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:22:54 +0000

Whenever someone set up new phone service, whether wireline or wireless, there as always the possibility of being given a recycled number. On the old PSTN, phone companies usually held disconnected numbers for about 3 months before putting them back into service. This meant that a new customer that was allocated that number would receive periodic calls intended for the former owner. This is much more of a problem

when cell phones are concerned because a call would be more likely to be intrusive and/or could be chargeable to the recipient. However, these days, the bigger problem is that the former user of the number may have signed up with various services to receive SMS messages and/or MMS messages, both of which are typically chargeable to the recipients, and being automated, are much more difficult to stop. So when comparing between various options, don’t just look at the phone features and the plan features offered by the wireless operator. Fijnd out how likely you are to receive a recycled number, what their policy is to change numbers and what features they may have to block incoming SMS and MMS messages. However, if you intend to actively exchange SMS and MMS messages, then simply having blocking capabilities is not enough. Getting a virgin phone number is what’s necessary.

Excess bandwidth fees – Bell Canada

William Teller — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:22:54 +0000

I’ve noticed that Bell Canada has recently lowered its bandwidth caps on some of its high speed internet plans. I’m not sure when this happened but do recall that the higher end plans, which now have bandwidth caps of 30 GB per month, were up at around 100 GB last time I looked (perhaps a year ago?). Bell does state that the cap “applies to new clients without a term agreement; $1.00/additional GB,

rounded up to the next GB of up to $30/month”. So they may have grandfathered existing customers, or at least the ones that had signed up for a term plan. See this chart to compare the various plans offered. While this seems like a high limit, it would not be hard to reach it for households who use IPTV services or who have kids running bit torrent.

FuturePhone.com offers free long distance

Brian Fox — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:22:54 +0000

Futurephone.com is offering free long distance to a couple of dozen international destinations for people who already have free US long distance or a bucket of minutes they can utilize for US long distance. No VOIP adapters or softphones required. Instead, callers make a phone call to an IOWA phone number and are then provided with a dial-tone to dial internationally. Right now the company appears to be trying to

build up its user base. Next year we may see them introduce commercial messages that are played before a call is put through.

CRTC affirms its VOIP ruling

William Teller — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:22:54 +0000

Canada’s telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), reaffirmed an earlier decision to continue to regulate what the major telephone companies can charge for VOIP services – at least until the incumbent telephone companies lose 25% of their market share. In doing so, it ignored the government’s desire to allow free market forces to play a bigger role. From the Globe and Mail.

Wireless Data Comparison

William Teller — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:22:54 +0000

Since I last surveyed Canadian options for high speed wireless data:

- Rogers has raised the cap on its top EDGE plan (C$100) from 100 MB to 200 MB
- Bell and Telus have imposed caps (250 MB) on their EVDO 1x plans (C$100) which can be expected to provide better performance than currently available EDGE technology

Meanwhile, the US cellular carriers continue to offer uncapped high speed data plans at lower rates than their Canadian counterparts:

- T-mobile EDGE (US$49.99)
- Cingular EDGE (US$60 with voice plan, $80 without)
- Verizon EVDO 1x (US$60 with voice plan)

Unlimited doesnâ€™t always mean unlimited

Jana Williamson — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:22:54 +0000

As TechDirt again reminds us all, just because a carrier says their service is UNLIMITED in large letters doesn’t mean it isn’t subject to bandwidth and usage caps that can result in the service being cut off for unsuspecting users. Wireless Broadband services are not really a substitute for DSL.

Information from source: http://www.gahtan.com/techlawblog/2006/07/27/unlimited-doesnt-always-mean-unlimited/

P2P TV Coming Soon?

Cheap Phone News — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:22:54 +0000

According to the Business 2.0 Blog, the people who brought us Napster and Skype now want to bring us a peer-to-peer television service. While there are already a number of TV over-the-internet services already available, a P2P based service would save on the huge bandwidth costs.

Information from source: http://www.gahtan.com/techlawblog/2006/07/27/p2p-tv-coming-soon/