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HOW TO GET HELP:
What you can do if there's a problem with your cellphone bill |
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Read on to find out what Professor Keshav has to say about the price differences between voice and data roaming, how he arrived at the figures presented in the show, and what he says you can do to save on roaming costs.
What is the difference between voice and data roaming? And why is there such a price difference?
There are two differences. For voice roaming, the call you receive goes to your home and then is delivered to you. If you're traveling in London, England, and your home is in Toronto, then the call would have to be [routed] to Toronto first, then it would come to you in London. It's an inherently more expensive process because of that. With data, however, it comes [directly] from the remote country to you. It doesn't have to go all the way back to Toronto. Data roaming in that sense is a bit easier to do.
The second difference between voice and data is that they're charged differently. Voice is charged by the minute, so you pay typically some number of cents per minute. Data is charged by how much data you receive or send. This is a problem because when you have a voice call, you know how many minutes you spent on that call. But when it's data for downloading an email, you don't know how much data is associated with it. It's like driving a car with no speedometer.
What better ways cellphone providers could charge for data?
There are many different ways to charge for data. One of the simplest ways would be unlimited, so wherever you are going you get unlimited data. That's probably the best case for the consumer and the worst for the provider. More practically, the provider could set a data limit, just like when you're filling up gas in your gas tank. Say you want $20 worth of data, and when you hit $20 dollars worth of data, it cuts off.
In your cost analyses, you mention you include operational and capital costs. How did you figure those costs out?
That's actually pretty straightforward. When you have a price for something, that price cannot exceed the cost if you're going to make a profit. For example, let's say that I'm paying $200 for Microsoft Word software. Obviously, the cost of the bits that you are downloading is practically zero, or if it's a CD-ROM, the disc itself is worth about five cents. But that's not what you're paying for. The price includes all the research and development that went into it. You can think of that as a capital cost. So in the same way when Rogers or any company charges you five cents a minute for voice, that price includes all of their operational and capital costs Meaning, it can't cost them any more than that according to my methodology.
In their responses to Marketplace, cellphone providers disagreed with your cost analysis. What is your response to that?
My analysis is based on publicly available figures and my understanding of the technology. I have no idea what the cellphone companies' internal rules are, however, in my work, I've been very careful to explicitly state all my assumptions. In the responses from the companies, they never actually told me what assumption that I've made is wrong. It's impossible for me to agree with that when they don't tell me what exactly I'm wrong about. I know the technology and I know what it costs the roaming partner and I know how much extra it should cost the cellphone company.
All of my analysis is publicly available and they're welcome to tell me which of my facts is wrong. The scientific process works by stating my facts, my assumptions, my methodology and my conclusion. It's impossible to respond to these kinds of so-called arguments without anything else behind them.
How can people protect themselves from incurring roaming costs?
Right. So I think that the first thing to be aware of when you're roaming is that it is likely to be expensive. The second thing is to try to estimate what your data-roaming pattern is going to be. Are you going to be making a lot of phone calls? Receiving data? Sending data? Try to pre-purchase a plan that suits what you want to do. Thirdly, in many countries, especially if you travel to Europe, you can get a cheap phone for local use. It's usually quite enough for most purposes. Finally, you could simply turn off your phone, and not roam.
I figured out on the last trip to the usa that it,s best to shut your phone off and if you,re down there for a while it,s cheaper to buy a phone and the minutes , we payed hundreds of extra $$ because we left the cell phone on and the roaming charges catch up real fast, course no one tells you this.
Do you have any information re cell phone use and hearing loss, tinnitus or acoutic neuroma?
I am accusing all of these and My sister tells me it's my cell phone. I am not a heavy user of the cell phone.
Thank you,
lisa