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Date: | Fri, 3 Mar 2000 05:50:50 -0600 |
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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
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