WASHINGTON-The leading provider of prepaid wireless services believes one main reason the United States is falling behind Europe in wireless customer take rates is the lack of calling party pays service.
“We are substantially behind Europe [when we used to be ahead]. That’s not forward effort but backwards efforts even though we are moving forward,” said E.Y. Snowden, president and chief executive officer of Boston Communications Group Inc.
CPP is similar to long-distance toll calling where the person placing the call to a wireless subscriber pays for the call rather than the wireless subscriber. CPP is the norm in Europe, while American carriers have traditionally required the subscriber to pay all charges related to mobile phone usage. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to allow for nationwide CPP, claiming it would increase competition and wireless phone use.
Rules providing for CPP were almost adopted two weeks ago by the FCC, but they were pulled from the Open Meeting Agenda. At RCR press time, it is unclear when or even if these rules will be adopted. There has been some talk inside the FCC about holding public forums on the pros and cons of CPP before adopting rules to implement it.
Snowden would definitely be on the proponent side. In a recent interview with RCR, Snowden stridently defended CPP.
“They have their heads in the sand if they think big buckets of minutes are going to cure all of the ills, but more important [calling party pays] will open doors for the wireless industry,” Snowden said.
Snowden said his company is a leading provider of prepaid wireless services to wireless carriers in North and South America.
Industry experts say there is a synergy between calling party pays and prepaid and that the service could be useful for the credit-challenged and low-volume users.
One of the criticisms of CPP is that it would be different for a caller using a landline phone to make a local call to a CPP customer because now the caller would be charged for making a local call. Snowden says there is no difference because callers do pay for the privilege of making local calls in their basic service, thus they are paying for the local calls.
Consumer advocates disagree and have called for specific notification to warn callers of impending charges. A staff proposal to the FCC for the rules that were pulled suggested that callers hear a notification containing certain elements.
Those elements would include notification that the call was being placed to a CPP subscriber of X carrier, rate information and language telling the caller how long they have to hang up before incurring any charges.
All of these elements are included in the notifications that callers to Bell Atlantic Mobile’s CPP Delaware trial hear.
While the industry still believes this is too much information, some consumer advocates-including state regulators-would have preferred a specific script that callers nationwide would hear.
