Incoming Call Charges
In the early days of mobile telephony, the operators (carriers) charged for all air time consumed by the mobile phone user, which included both outbound and inbound telephone calls. As mobile phone adoption rates increased, competition between operators meant that some decided not to charge for incoming calls in some markets (also called "calling party pays").
The European market adopted a calling party pays model throughout the GSM environment and soon various other GSM markets also started to emulate this model.
In Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, and the United States, it is common for the party receiving the call to be charged per minute, although a few carriers are beginning to offer unlimited received phone calls. This is called the "Receiving Party Pays" model. In China, it was reported that both of its two operators will adopt the caller-pays approach as early as January 2007.
One disadvantage of the receiving party pays systems is that phone owners keep their phones turned off to avoid receiving unwanted calls, which results in the total voice usage rates (and profits) in Calling Party Pays countries outperform those in Receiving Party Pays countries. To avoid the problem of users keeping their phone turned off, most Receiving Party Pays countries have either switched to Calling Party Pays, or their carriers offer additional incentives such as a large number of monthly minutes at a sufficiently discounted rate to compensate for the inconvenience.
Note that when a user roaming in another country, international roaming tariffs apply to all calls received, regardless of the model adopted in the home country.
Read more about this topic: Mobile Telephony, Tariff Models
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