Washington/Baltimore Flexphone
Mike Sussman
two to three cellular phones to utilize the same mobile number. This
new product will be marketed under the term, FlexPhone, and will be
available to the the public on November 21, 1994.
This product is a response to the marketplace, and will be a
communication solution for a limited amount of subscribers on our
system. FlexPhone can be the answer for some customer needs, while for
others, it's limitations will render it unattractive for their
communication requirements.
The simplest way to understand the product and it's value to the
marketplace is to grasp a typical profile of the ideal customer for
FlexPhone:
PROFILE: Exisiting customer with an installed mobile phone, who's
communication needs have outgrown the confines of the car. Thus leading
the consumer to search for alternatives (gee they finally realized!!)
which will provide personal flexibility as well as convenience for the
caller.
The product should be viewed for use by one individual, and never
confused or interpreted as an extension phone or a two user solution.
How does FlexPhone work?
flexphone can be viewed as a feature which can be added to an existing
customer's cellular number. The feature allows the Cellular One
switching system to recognize 2-3 ESN's with ONE cellular number.
Downside:
you can not call one phone from the other.
$17.95 / mo for the additional phone
$29.95 / mo for 2 additional phones
you can not roam with the secondary number
you can not have both phones on at the same time
it takes 48 hours to activate the second phone and if you need to switch
primary phones 9to allow roaming access on the other phone) it also
takes 48 hours to process
there is NO bundling price for a FlexPhone (add $300 to advertised
prices)
If you wish further information you can reach me at (703)680-1601
Mike Sussman
(this article was reprinted from a dealer bulletin dated 10/7/94
CID Tech/INSG
(Mike Sussman) writes:
>An exciting new feature will bea available which will effectively allow
>two to three cellular phones to utilize the same mobile number. This
>new product will be marketed under the term, FlexPhone, and will be
>available to the the public on November 21, 1994.
>
>flexphone can be viewed as a feature which can be added to an existing
>customer's cellular number. The feature allows the Cellular One
>switching system to recognize 2-3 ESN's with ONE cellular number.
It's about time...but WHO is doing this? I assume it is SWBell's
DC/Baltimore "A" 00013 system...Is this correct?
>Downside:
>you can not call one phone from the other.
No big deal...you can't do that now anyway, so I could live with that.
>$17.95 / mo for the additional phone
>$29.95 / mo for 2 additional phones
Ha! Are you kidding? $18 per month? That's like $240 per year...You can
get a duplicate phone made for LESS than that and have none of the
subsequent limitations!
Errr....why charge ANYTHING more? Don't cell co's realize that if a
customer has the phone on his or her person more often, either in the car
with a 3watt or on the street with a .6 watt that they will be more
likely to place and receive calls, and thus the increased use will result
in increased profits for the cell co.
>you can not roam with the secondary number
Why not? Why can't all the valid ESN/MIN combos for the account go out
over the PRV or whatever is used now and allow them all to work...I can't
see a reason for this. The DC/Baltimore system, while large, is not too
"deep". If you go inland a bit, especially around Baltimore, you hit the
Harrisburg and/or some other PA system (some RSA between Harrisburg and
I-95). If you head east on US-50 (Is this supposed to be I-595 soon?)
towards Annapolis and then northward a bit and face the Delmarva
Peninsula, you will get the ComCast-Cell One/DE operated system (00123).
Not to mention that many people from the DC and especially Baltimore
region travel to Philly, Wilmington, NY and Boston frequently enough. Do
you mean to say that the service will be of no use to those people in
these areas where there is regular and heavy roaming?
People who need multiple phones with the same NAM are those who in my
mind are most likely to roam, and thus you are removing a great deal of
utility from a service which is explicitly supposed to enhance the
utility of a cellular phone.
>you can not have both phones on at the same time
Pretty much standard, and is to be expected, although you'd think that
they COULD allow this since each phone has a different ESN. If they were
creative, they could have some software to say "Customer A drives to work
at 9AM, so send calls to that ESN first, and then try the others. Between
10AM and 4PM, customer A is in his office, so try the handheld first,
etc..etc.". Each phone would not have to be rung - each would just be
interrogated and the ones which were *active* would ring in sequence.
This way, a customer could leave the phone on in his car, or on his desk,
and not have to worry about which one was on or off. The car would ring
first, the desk second, etc. And, by interrogating the phones prior to
ringing them, the switch could determine which were active quickly
enough so that there would be no appreciable delay in call delivery.
>it takes 48 hours to activate the second phone and if you need to switch
>primary phones 9to allow roaming access on the other phone) it also
>takes 48 hours to process
I could drive to Maine and back in that amount of time, hit over 20
systems, and then come back. I don't think I'd want to wait 48 hours, and
I don't think other customers would either. I don't always know where I
will be roaming 48 hours prior to leaving my home system. As a matter of
fact, I can anticipate SWBell/DC-Baltimore customers dirving between
Newark, DE and Baltimore daily. How would this work? It would be more or
less impossible with such a travel pattern to have the use of the other
phone while in DE...
Note that a customer who paid $150 or so to have their phone copied would
not have any of these problems (and I DON'T want to get into another
argument as to how legal it is or whatever - it's done, live with it).
If SWBell is offering this, it is all too typical. They appear to just
love coming out with a 'great' new service and then charging through the
nose for it, all the while making it seem like you the customer are
getting a great deal.
Take Cell One/Boston: For years they did not have automatic call delivery
to New Hamphsire and Maine, while NYNEX did. Then, when they set up
automatic call delivery, they charge their users HOME AND ROAMING AIRTIME
to receive calls while roaming! You can be in (non-seacoast) New New
Hampshire, and whenever you get a call you will pay (a) New Hampshire
airtime, (b) a toll delivery charge from Boston to you in New Hampshire,
AND (c) HOME AIRTIME in Boston! Why?
They give plenty of reasons, like "We don't want people hogging our
trunks - it takes two of them, you know, to deliver a call" and stuff
like that. What it comes down to is that just about every other cell
carrier in the US doesn't charge home airtime to have your calls
delivered, so why does Cell One/Boston? I'll venture they figure they can
get away with it, especially since their bills are so chaotic that it's
hard for most customers to tell from looking at their bills that they are
indeed paying for this. And to add insult to injury, if you use the
Nationlink system to tell callers the roam port number of the market
where you are visiting (ie, hit *32), Cell One/Boston will bill you
airtime (one minute of it) just so your callers can hear where you are.
How they associate this with airtime I dunno, but apparently either the
charges have caused their customers not to use Nationlink et. al., or not
enough customers have complained (I wish they would!). Then of course
theres the $2 "roamer administration fee" (Roam Coordinator Slush Fund),
but let's not get started on that...
So back to DC - If this in indeed SWBel's idea, they are basically trying
to offer something useful, and then making you pay an absurdly high
premium for it, just like they do in Boston. Instead of paying them
$18/month to get a second phone, I'd suggest getting a copy made of your
current phone and using that instead. Once they see that no one wants this
service (and I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to intimidate people
into using this instead of getting an ESN copy), maybe they will be a bit
more customer-responsive and offer a service which is truly competitive in
terms of price and features with copying one's ESN and using a cloned
phone.
-Doug Reuben CID Technologies (203) 499 - 5221
*FTP to: 'ftp.netcom.com', pub/cidtech for MacPager Call ID -> Pager Demo*
*Also FTP to above for info on InterPage's *Enhanced* E-Mail -> Pager Svc.
Gregory Jon Schaffer
>others, it's limitations will render it unattractive for their
>communication requirements.
>The simplest way to understand the product and it's value to the
>marketplace is to grasp a typical profile of the ideal customer for
>FlexPhone:
>PROFILE: Exisiting customer with an installed mobile phone, who's
...ok, MAYBE this is nitpicking, but missplaced apostrophes is one of my
biggest pet peeves, and having been a technical paper grader for an
undergraduate engineering class I CRINGE whenever I see this type
of mistake in a professional document (this was from a press release).
it's == IT IS
who's == who is
Greg
Greg Schaffer Voice: (716) 645-2999
Communication Systems Engineering Fax: (716) 645-3081
104 Computing Center Pager: (716) 774-4814
State University of New York at Buffalo Internet: scha...@acsu.buffalo.edu
Buffalo, New York 14260-1411 http://lictor.acsu.buffalo.edu/~schaffer