Voip Blog
Why Mobile Phones In The U.S. Are Geographic
Thursday, May 29, 2008
One of the fundamental tenets of the Bell System that survives today is the concept that local calls are free. What's local? The rough guideline I remember was "anything within a 12 mile radius." In some cases, particularly in more rural locations, local calls may cover a wider area, sometimes at a higher local line cost. When I lived in Hawaii, all calls within the same island were considered local.
The telecom laws in the U.S. require that mobile phones have a "home" in a geographic region. From a practical point of view, it means that all mobile phones are "local" calls from somewhere. In other words, it does not cost any extra money to call a mobile phone than it does to call a landline. The converse is true, mobile-to-mobile minute plans notwithstanding.
Since mobile network operators do not maintain points of presence in every community, your mobile phone number will frequently come from a nearby community. While this generally results in your mobile phone being a local call from your landline, in rare cases, your mobile phone number may be long distance.
One major problem with requiring mobile phones to be associated with a particular geography became readily apparent with the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Anyone who had a mobile phone with a New Orleans telephone number--even though they were physically elsewhere--were unable to receive telephone calls. This is because the New Orleans telephone exchanges were not available.
The downside, of course, to landlines and mobile phones being treated equally in the eyes of the public switched telephone network is that users of mobile phones are charged for both incoming and outgoing calls in the U.S. and Canada. The good news for mobile phone users is that competition has driven the cost of minutes down to the point where the pain of paying for an incoming call is minimal.
