The company that gave us the five cent a minute phone call is rolling out
another innovations, detailed below.

kelly

The New York Times


February 28, 2000

COMPRESSED DATA

[unrelated stuff snipped]

     A Home-Grown Answer on Cellular Charges

     As the Federal Communications Commission continues to debate
     whether users of wireless telephones should have to pay to receive
     as well as make calls, IDT Corp. has taken matters into its own
     hands.

     Based in Hackensack, N.J., IDT is the communications carrier that
     pioneered new services including phone calls over the Internet and
     call-back -- a service that allows people overseas to slash the
     rates they pay for international calls by routing them through the
     United States.

     Without building a wireless network, IDT is now set to introduce a
     service that would offer nationwide wireless service while
     eliminating the fees cellular customers typically pay for incoming
     calls.

     Almost all cellular phone subscribers, unlike users of traditional
     phones, have to pay when they receive calls. As the wireless
     industry tries to become a pervasive competitor to entrenched local
     telephone monopolies, it is pressing the FCC to establish rules
     that would extend the traditional "calling party pays" billing
     model into the wireless arena. That would enable wireless users who
     sign up for a caller-pays plan to receive calls free.

     But IDT is not waiting. Instead, it has put together a system that
     includes a feature that even the major carriers may not have
     thought of.

     IDT's approach is to buy large lots of cellular subscriptions from
     big carriers like AT&T. But before selling them to consumers, IDT
     links the phones to a system of its own making that allows each
     phone to have two numbers.

     One number has a standard area code, and when a call comes in on
     that number, the wireless subscriber is billed as usual for the
     incoming call. But each IDT phone also has a toll-free number. When
     someone using a normal phone calls the toll-free number, they hear
     a message that informs them that they will be charged -- typically
     10 cents a minute -- to reach the wireless subscriber, who would
     then receive the call without fees.

     The two-number system could allow a wireless subscriber to give the
     toll-free number to most people while giving the receiver-pays
     wireless number to close family members, for instance. -- SETH
     SCHIESEL


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html