Comments on: Dr John’s exorbitant wireless bill

By: f4te

f4te — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:20:28 +0000

sadly, surfer is right

By: surfer

surfer — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:46:31 +0000

SMS (text messaging) cost nothing, nada, zip, zero. It is part of the GSM protocol that allows the phone to connect to cells (phone towers). An example of GSM is the bars on your phone to determine the signal strength, that is sent across GSM for nothing, SMS rides this same carrier wave, hence the overhead for this service is nothing.

SMS has an average global price of 0.11 USD and maintains a near 95% profit margin.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:49:54 +0000

Speaking of spam.
I wonder how much of the good Doc’s $1,400 Rogers bill was spam (aside from the Rogers call asking how he liked the service, heh).

By: Jon

Jon — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:25:27 +0000

It’s spam: I get to it when I can.

Cheers!

By: nova

nova — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:10:15 +0000

What’s all this Russian shit that keeps showing up from the likes of ‘Kirra’ above?

By: David

David — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:31:43 +0000

I would guess that he put the NZ sim in the phone when he needed to make a voice call but left his Rogers sim in it for the rest of the time. This would mean that when his phone downloaded his email, it was using data on roaming rates. Hence the massive bill.

When I travel, I make sure to disable the automatic downloading of email (or any data) to my phone to avoid roaming rates, I would guess that this doctor didn’t consider that.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:46:20 +0000

no clue. Maybe he was using SMS or something…

I noticed this a while back:

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?s=e9fff782d573016b8016be39f2e9fc28&t=1529756
“I thought this was kind of cool (or not so cool). If they charge us 15c a text message without a plan, and each text message is 160 (mine seems to be limited to 140 characters) bytes maximum. Then 15/160= 0.09375 cents/byte * 1024 = 96 centes/kb * 1024 = $983.04/MB

If you have a $10 for 2500 text messages plan then it is costing you. $26.21/MB for text messages.

And lastly if you go to the states where Bell charges you 60 cents for sending? It will cost you $3932.16/MB.

Just thought this was interesting since data seems to be a lot cheaper than this. Also from the article I hear that companies “piggybacking them on other transmissions.” I would be interested to know if that is true cause then why do I pay so much for something that costs them almost nothing.”

Bell, Telus & Rogers, the biggest thieves in all of Canada.

By: Confused

Confused — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:51:01 +0000

Ok I’m lost. How did Dr. Sehmer end up with data roaming charges in New Zealand from Rogers Wireless when it’s reported he was using a local New Zealand Sim card? Apparently he was not charged roaming for his voice calls, so why data?

If in fact he was using a local New Zealand sim, then would he not be charged for data usage according to rates the wireless Carrier in New Zealand charges? The local sim he was using should only apply to the New Zealand Carriers data rates and have nothing to do with Rogers at all.