“I have never understood why it’s virtually impossible to keep track of the minutes that you’ve used on your cell phone. My phone has a timer … but it doesn’t round up the minutes, so the number you get is always a bit off. Also, there’s no way to count ‘anytime’ minutes and weekend/evening minutes separately; there’s only one timer. I can’t even find the minutes I’ve used on my carrier’s Web site. But they always manage to have them neatly added up when they send my bill. The only conclusion that I have been able to come up with is that the carriers want you to go over your allotment. Then they can charge you those sky-high per-minute rates.”
So opines a letter to the New York Times, in which a California woman expresses her frustrations in trying to track the wireless minutes she uses. While most wireless carriers offer their wares in terms of buckets of minutes, what should be the most obvious requirement for such a system to work turns out to be the most difficult process to track.
Many consumers find it frustrating and frequently next to impossible to keep a correct tally of how many wireless minutes they have used. However, it is hard to get a correct gauge of how many consumer complaints are related to the minutes-used confusion: The FCC’s Consumer Information Bureau recently released the first of what will be quarterly reports on the numbers and types of complaints and inquiries it has received from the public. Preliminary statistics illustrate that, for both wireline and wireless services, billing-related complaints make up the largest category—but the breakdown was less than specific.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has formed a task force to look at the volume of complaints received nationwide against businesses in the wireless industry, but it has not yet reached specifics either.
Edward Johnson, president and CEO of the BBB of Metropolitan Washington, says though breakdowns are difficult, most complaints the organization receives center on the point of sale.
“Generally the complaints revolve around pricing issues involving what a customer thought they were paying per minute over the average of what they thought was the maximum number of minutes that they have,” says Johnson. “Billing is the No. 1 concern when relating to wireless issues.”
Experts insist that the problem will only become more acute, as new generations of technologies and increased numbers of billable events overload already burdened systems.
Keeping a Running Tally
“There are basically two methods of accounting for wireless minutes: through the network or through the device,” says Adam Guy, a senior analyst at the Strategis Group’s Mobile Wireless Research Group. “Most operators do it on the network now, but others are passionate, almost evangelical about the handset being the answer. I don’t know which is better.”
The lack of a call timer in the handheld device, and the fact that it doesn’t count minutes the way the service providers do, leave most users dependent on the wireless providers. The nation’s four biggest—AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS—offer options for monitoring used minutes.
An automated recording announces how many minutes have been used when Sprint PCS subscribers dial *4 on the cell phone, says spokesman Brian Wood. Users also can seek the information at the company’s Web site, or those who have wireless Web access on their phones can check their online account directly from their handsets.
Sprint PCS and others warn in a disclaimer that information given out during the billing cycle is an estimate and may not include calls made while roaming outside the company’s network.
Similarly, Verizon Wireless customers can dial #min from their phones to get an automated recording giving a tally of minutes, if they sign up for that service. But a Verizon spokesman says it could take as long as 48 hours for used minutes to register on the #min feature and that it does not include roaming minutes. Currently, the feature is available only in the former Bell Atlantic mobile markets on the East Coast.
Cell phones made in the last few years have timers that keep track of how long you have talked. But relying on the timer has drawbacks in any case. Since most wireless carriers round up in calculating minutes—a 13-second call counts as a minute—the phone’s timer will generally display fewer minutes than your wireless carrier has counted. Another drawback is that consumers have to remember to reset the timer at the beginning of each billing cycle, a task that could slip the mind of all but the most conscientious consumer.
The Network or the Device?
One theory is that the only true indicator of the number of minutes remaining is for the billing process to take place in the end device itself.
Telemac, which develops accounting, billing and payment processing technologies, believes that traditional network-centric billing technologies are not keeping pace with the growth of wireless data services, micropayments and m-commerce.
“Traditional network-centric billing methodologies alone cannot support peer-to-peer ad hoc wireless networks, such as Bluetooth, that will enable machine-to-machine communications between a range of consumer appliances and the vendors that supply these machines with products and services,” the company says.
The company claims to have pioneered the development of intelligent wireless devices and holds global patents for network-edge real-time billing technologies, says Robert Pye, Telemac’s senior vice president for worldwide business development.
Telemac’s products allow handheld units to move between different radio frequencies and across networks and still operate correctly, says Pye, supporting what he sees as the better format for monitoring used minutes, the handheld device. He adds that with the number of networks, protocols supported by the handset and consumer mobility all increasing, it will become more crucial for monitoring to be done on the user’s end.
“It makes sense to move this particular function to the part of the network that is always constant—the mobile device,” Pye explains. “That edge of the network is the only constant, because that is where the information is being received.”
Pye says network usage statistics suggest that “you want to move processes to where you have the most processing power. In the case of billing you have to move it out to the handset, where you have all the processing power.”
For example, Pye says, if it takes 25 SS7 transactions for a prepaid call and that traffic is going back and forth, and if there are 1 million subscribers and 25 million transactions, it makes more sense to move processing to the handset, so that each device only has to manage 25 transactions.
Handset Security
Tal Givoly, director of product management at Xacct Technologies, believes that the network, not the handset, should be used to monitor time spent. His main premise is that any handheld device is susceptible to fraud, and the technology does not exist to avoid even the most novice hacker from charging into the system to alter billing processes.
“It is really a hacker-friendly environment. For every security check that there is to make sure that the software is safeguarded, there is a technological way to get around it,” Givoly says. It is a back-and-forth battle between security elements added to the software in the handheld devices and the hacker who is looking to break into the system to spread havoc.
Another problem with the handset, according to Givoly, is how to maintain bills for advanced services.
“The operators that will offer these advanced services will have to offer real-time EBPP, so they will be able to have within a very known time frame an accurate bill which will not be reprocessed,” he explains. “The technology is there. It is not like we are talking about science fiction, to be able to have the bill upped within 15 minutes to reflect the actual results at the end of the billing period.”
Givoly notes that not all carriers currently have that capability. “Obviously, not all operators may be able to offer this, but that would be a differentiating factor, if operators decide to exploit it in marketing,” he says.
“There is no reason that with today’s technology there should be a problem monitoring minutes,” he adds. “Most systems have real-time components to support the market need. I have heard the consumer complaints and there is a solution—just not every operator has that solution, just like not every operator has a phone-based solution, either.”
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