Cellular phone graphic

Reason to roam with your cellular phone

Aware that many users shy away from using cellular phones when they roam outside their home area because they are confused about pricing, the cellular merger of Bell Atlantic Corp. and NYNEX Corp. plans to announce this week that it has streamlined its roaming rates.

Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile will eliminate the $3-per-day fee for roaming and charge a flat 59 cents per minute no matter where within the company's Maine-to-South Carolina footprint the user travels.

Previously, users would pay a varying rate per minute, depending on which cities they roamed to and from.

The companies believe overall usage of cellular services will increase if users understand how much roaming calls cost, a Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile spokesman said.

Ian Gillott, an analyst for International Data Corp. (IDC) in Framingham, Mass., who focuses on the cellular telephone industry, said the flat roaming rate is the first he is aware of and could indeed increase demand.

Gillott said roaming is among the chief concerns of users, ranking fourth behind pricing, coverage area and voice quality.

While the new rates may help spur voice usage, they are not necessarily more attractive than competing wireless data technology.

Bill Frezza, principal of Wireless Computing Associates, Inc. of Yardley, Pa., said the new pricing is comparable to Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) services.

He said the price range for CDPD was 8 to 29 cents per kilobyte. Figuring 59 cents per minute for a roaming cellular call, plus 25 cents per minute for the long-distance link, a roaming call costs a total of about 84 cents per minute.

Assuming 9.6K bit/sec throughput, the price of transmitting messages between 3K and 10K bytes over a cellular call would be about on a par with CDPD.

For larger files, the switched cellular call would be considerably less expensive, Frezza said.

The cost of switched cellular will likely drop further as personal communications services are phased in, he predicted.

IDC's Gillott said he expected flat-rate roaming would be extended from Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobil to the US WEST, Inc. and AirTouch Communications alliance. Spokesmen for NYNEX and US WEST said it was too soon to tell, but that would be a goal.

Currently, roaming rates vary widely, depending on where the user roams to and from.

For example, in US WEST's Pacific Northwest region, users can roam from Oregon to Washington to northern Idaho and pay their home rate, which depends on what calling plan they have subscribed to.

If they roam to other parts of the US WEST region, they pay a different rate.

Under the old rates, the Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile rate for Boston to Washington, D.C. was different from the rate for Washington, D.C. to Boston (see graphic) .

Confusion over the rates extends even to the knowledgeable.

"I avoid roaming at all costs," Gillott said. "Most people don't know what they're paying for roaming, including myself."