U S West Cellular has launched calling party pays service in yet another market, while other operators continue to say customers aren’t interested.
“It is not a service our customers have asked us for,” said BellSouth Cellular spokeswoman Nicole Lipson.
“We don’t offer it. There’s not a significant demand for it,” said Annette Teter, spokeswoman for Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems.
The inability to bill for some long distance calls, and the complex jumble of exchanges necessary to pass some calls, is one reason Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile only offers the service in Phoenix, Albuquerque, N.M., and El Paso, Texas.
“Until that leakage problem is solved, we won’t expand the service further,” said spokesman Jim Gerace.
Going its own way, U S West has rolled out “Caller Pays” service market by market for the last half dozen years, in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and some of Washington state.
Now it’s launching Caller Pays in Omaha/Council Bluffs, Neb.
“Some people have perceived dialing a cellular number as calling collect and have been reluctant to contact friends or clients at their cellular numbers,” said Jan Zackman, branch manager for U S West Cellular in Omaha.
U S West said the service is particularly appealing to businesses that pay for employee cellular phone use.
Caller Pays only works in local calling areas at this time because the carrier doesn’t have a way to bill across long distance, said U S West spokeswoman Wendy Carver-Herbert. Although those boundaries are expected to blur in the future, at this time U S West only can bill for cellular long distance calls if they are intraLATA and U S West Communications Inc. carries the call.
Customers ordering the service will receive a special phone number; current cellular users must have their phone reprogrammed. Callers must dial 1 plus the area code before the cellular phone number. In the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, the 650 prefix has been reserved exclusively for U S West Cellular Caller Pays customers.
Cost for the caller is 35 cents per minute peak time and 24 cents per minute off peak.
In most cases, the caller will be using a landline phone, so the charges will appear on the landline bill.
“[Dialing] a 1 before the area code tells the caller there is a toll associated with the call. In some markets it’s very popular, and in others it’s just catching on,” Carver-Herbert said.
Ameritech Cellular also offers calling party pays in several U.S. markets.
