No excess usage charge on P2T till Jan06

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tonyhughes

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#3880 16-Apr-2005 13:14

P2T will be $10 monthly until the end of the year, with no excess usage charges. Once they start billing for excess usage, 18,000 seconds a month for $10 is still a blimmin great deal.

You are only charged whilst you are holding the button down to speak.

jase250

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#14233 17-Apr-2005 18:21

Are you sure that is the correct way for P2T to be charged? I was under the impression that once the P2T connection was established (as in, the receiver(s) had accepted the call), all connected accounts were clocking up time until they disconnected from that particular session.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was what I heard through the pipeline. It makes more sense to me.

The answer is: There are still monkeys and apes for the same reason that there are still British, even though my great grandfather was British and I am a Kiwi.

alasta

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#14234 17-Apr-2005 18:29

Surely the network provider is incurring cost only while data is being transmitted, i.e., when the button is being held down? I don't believe that it would be fair to charge for time during which all handsets connected to the session are idle.

jase250

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#14235 17-Apr-2005 18:38

I see your point, but (again, correct me if I am wrong) I was under the impression that the P2T was a data connection. If that is the case, then would there not be a connection established between the phones that was active for the period of the call? If so, then I can't see how TC can charge per minute of talking - the connection is sending data. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but it seems to make more sense when it comes to the billing side of things.

Being a data connection would explain why it's not available on prepays, as there is no billing system set up.

If you are not talking on a P2T call while it is connected, wouldn't that be like phoning someone with a voice call and not talking? It seems fair enough to charge for that..

The answer is: There are still monkeys and apes for the same reason that there are still British, even though my great grandfather was British and I am a Kiwi.

tonyhughes

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#14236 17-Apr-2005 19:28

the only significant data being transferred is while a user has their button down, and thats when the clock goes on.

Whilst they are not talking, there is no significant data going through, hence, no charging (a voice call carries data even for silence). I know that there is data going through when you are listening, but someone is already paying for that (the talker).

So... unlike a normal voice call, you only pay for what you say (like texting)

Prepaid has already been migrated to the new billing platform (I think it was actually the first major thing to do so), and I guess they are ironing out bugs there before they start introducing other things for prepaid.

jase250

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#14238 17-Apr-2005 22:50

Makes sense. Happy to be corrected. Cheers.

The answer is: There are still monkeys and apes for the same reason that there are still British, even though my great grandfather was British and I am a Kiwi.

DKS1DR

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#14600 9-May-2005 18:36

Disenchanted is correct.

As a side, Telecom aare looking to have P2T available to prepaid user's hopefully by the end of july '05

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tonyhughes

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#14601 9-May-2005 18:49

thats great. the uptake on prepaid will be quite significant i think. the amount of people who looked at p2t specs before it launched and said "what a pointless service" will be keeping their mouths closed lately i should think :-)

DKS1DR

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#14608 9-May-2005 22:19

Yes, but if you remember back to when text was launched, the same people were saying the same things then too.........

Insert witty remark here!