Canadian surprised by $85,000 cell bill
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Piotr Staniaszek normally pays $147 a month for his cell phone. So he was more than a little surprised to learn his November bill had ballooned to $59,000.
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You may have seen ads for services offering cheap &#39;&#39;Internet phone calls,&#39;&#39; or heard someone bragging about how little they pay for long distance because they have an Internet phone, and wondered what they were talking about.
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Greater Boston wireless subscribers who use their cellphones to look up weather reports or entertainment sites may see something unusual this week: an ad offering a 99-cent latte at Dunkin' Donuts.
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Dignity restored for $111.87 Analysis Friday was one of life's great days: I returned my iPhone. I was tired of Apple's adult-proof keyboard. I was tired of AT&amp;T's piddling wireless network. But most of all, I was embarrassed that I'd bought the thing in the first place.â¦
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Strata8 Networks, which officially opened its doors for business on Thursday, is offering a new twist on helping enterprises to lower their cell phone costs.The company, which has its own cellular spectrum licenses, offers enterprises cellular service inside of their corporate offices at a flat rate. Strata8 customers place a small base station in their building to provide coverage to workers using standard cell phones. The phones connect to the corporate cellular network while in the office but roam onto a commercial network elsewhere.The Bellevue, Washington, company is unique among others offering products that extend cellular coverage indoors in that Strata8 uses its own wireless spectrum. The spectrum, in the 1900MHz band, is the same kind used by most of the nationwide mobile operators and is owned by Strata8&#39;s parent company, Wirefree Partners.Enterprises pay $25 per user per month for the service, which includes unlimited calling to co-workers in the organization as well as to any other Strata8 customer. The base station connects to the enterprise&#39;s existing phone system, so long-distance and international calls cost the same as they would from a desk phone.The service should allow customers to save money by cutting back on their cell-phone service plans, according to Andy Wilson, executive vice president of marketing for Strata8. Craig Mathias, an analyst with the Farpoint Group, said many reports have shown that more than half of calls made from within offices are made over cell phones.But while calls from desk phones are generally cheaper than calls made from cell phones, companies should look at various factors to determine whether Strata8 would save them money, Mathias said. For example, some enterprises may not to be able to negotiate lower rates than they already get from their cell phone provider, so Strata8 would end up being an additional cost.Instead of Strata8, an enterprise could use a converged Wi-Fi and cellular service, where calls over the Wi-Fi networks are free and Wi-Fi access points are relatively inexpensive. However, that setup could require many Wi-Fi access points and also requires end-users to choose from just a few expensive phones currently available to work with such systems, he said.In addition, Wi-Fi networks use unlicensed frequencies and so can run into interference problems. But if an office building isn&#39;t using other equipment that might interfere, and if it isn&#39;t near other businesses using a similar system, converged Wi-Fi and cellular services should work well, Mathias said. Still, Strata8&#39;s offering is a clever idea that could work well for some enterprises, he said.The base stations that Strata8 uses, called pico cells, are made by UTStarcom and use the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) mobile technology. Enterprises must pay for the pico cells; Strata8 said the price varies depending on the site.One pico cell could cover a 10,000-square-foot building, but all structures present different challenges, Wilson said. Some deployments might require additional repeaters to extend coverage. Strata8 will hang the equipment for customers or train IT managers to do it themselves.Strata8 is in final negotiations on a roaming deal with a cellular operator, but Wilson said he couldn&#39;t reveal which one. Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel have nationwide CDMA networks.For now, end-users can choose from just five phones that work with the Strata8 system, including the Moto Q, Treo 700wx, Razr V3 and two HTC handsets. While any CDMA phone will work in theory, these selected phones support roaming between the Strata8 and the wide area cellular network.Other companies such as RadioFrame, also from the Seattle area, sell pico cells that help improve cellular coverage for enterprises. However, Strata8 has advantages because its system connects to an existing corporate telephone system, reducing the costs of calls for enterprises, according to Wilson. In addition, because Strata8 is using its own spectrum, it was able to set the flat rate monthly fee, he said.Strata8&#39;s service is available in some cities on the U.S. Virgin Islands and regions of nine states including Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. The company said it has a few customers already but declined to reveal their names.
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Research in Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry smart phone, spent $890,000 in 2007 to lobby the federal government on patent reform.
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The Canadian government is considering offering provinces more than C$9 billion ($6.9 billion) for health care over five years as long as they follow rules when spending the money, the
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By San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Jun. 27--How much a plan costs   Apple and AT&T announced Tuesday that the iPhone's wireless service plans will cost between $60 and $220 per month and include unlimited Internet and e-mail data, 200 text messages and at least 450 voice minutes.
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The deal is valued at about $100 million, but the handset maker will be billed based on actual service consumption.
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AT&T said Tuesday that calling plans for the iPhone will start at $59.99 USD per month and include unlimited data, 200 text messages, rollover, mobile-to-mobile, and Apple's "visual voicemail."
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When Adam Yuzuk had a question about his cellphone bill, a Cingular Wireless agent told him to check his online account.
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By Tim Catts, Daily News, New York  Mar. 5--A cruel Internet scam is promising help with debts, but then  steering victims into a costly con run out of Canada, the Better Business  Bureau has warned.
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Just in the past few weeks: My wife, Georgina, and I made new investments with the money from maturing certificates of deposit. Our local telephone bill started coming from AT&amp;T, the new name for BellSouth . The customer service number for our long-distance carrier changed. We switched Internet service providers, and have a new account number (I kept my AOL ...
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Cell phone customers are increasingly complaining--and suing--over mysterious, hard-to-cancel charges on their monthly bills.
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By PETER SVENSSON  NEW YORK - Wouldn't it be great to have your own cellular tower at home? You'd always have a strong signal on your mobile phone, and you wouldn't be paying to use the carrier's network.
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Without help, Marc Maurer, who is blind, cannot distinguish between bottles of Tylenol and Vitamin C or tell if he's handing a cashier a $20 bill or $1 bill. Four years ago, he signed for what he thought was a $44 hotel room bill that was charged to his credit card for $44,000.
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A little fee here, a tiny charge there, and before you know it, youâre talking about real money.