wrote:

If the number belongs to a real network not a virtual one, what are the
other costs then? Unless its used up its entire allocation of numbers it
won't be losing any money so tell me what I've missed.

Knowing something about accounting at large public firms, I suspect there is an
allocation of fixed costs made to each active number. Metrics used to judge
mobile companies are things like revenue per line, revenue per subscriber and
profit margin per subscriber/line.

While allocation of fixed costs may look arbintrary, there are industry
standards involved that make coming up with an alternate allocation difficult.

In other words, it's not so much the cost of each number, it's the allocation of
costs that exist regardless of the quantity of numbers.That said, it wouldn't
surprise me if there were actual costs associated numbers, regardless of account
type of use. I'm thinking things like payments to Ofcom, line leasing from
OpenReach, etc.

On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 09:23:05 +0000 (UTC), wrote:

On Sat, 20 Jul 2019 19:09:38 -0000 (UTC)
Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
Clank wrote:
MissRiaElaine Wrote in message:
You can have one-month rolling contracts, say £10 a month.
Some operators may call it PAYG but it's still a contract as far as I'm
concerned and I wouldn't touch one with a very long pole.

The difference between 30-day contract, and pay as you go, is very
simple - with PAYG you pay in advance, with the contract you pay
in arrears. (For the calls at least, if not the standing charge
- although these days most calls are covered by the standing
charge anyway so it does become slightly harder to discern the
difference.)


Contract takes its monthly payment automatically until you tell them
otherwise, PAYG requires you to specifically make the payment, surely?
(I’ve never had a payg phone so I can’t be sure)

I think there's some confusion between a phone contract with a legal contract.

Only the c word counts.

PAYG is not a phone contract but is a legal contract for the phone company to
provide you with a service while you still have money on account.

It goes beyond that. Your service is not finally killed off until the
end of the period after which the company will no longer keep your
number on the system. As that is part of the Ts and Cs then your
contract is live until at least the end of that period. If there is no
further obligation then that will be what terminates most contracts
which depend on using the system and/or making a payment before the
end of a specified time period.

On 21/07/2019 21:32, wrote:
On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 19:55:40 +0100
Someone Somewhere wrote:


Ok Mr Telecoms Expert, exactly how much disk space does all the relevant
information about a single cellular phone number take up then? Obviously you
have the figures to hand so please share them.

Nah - whilst I do know the exact figure (or more to the point I could
look it up), it's getting more and more amusing to see you getting
irate when you seem to truly believe that the only cost is the disk
space - something that if it makes up 0.01% of the cost would surprise me.

If the number belongs to a real network not a virtual one, what are the
other costs then? Unless its used up its entire allocation of numbers it
won't be losing any money so tell me what I've missed. You and Perry are very
good at being supercilious, a bit less hot on supplying actual information.


If I had exact answers I couldn't supply them as I'd clearly be privvy
to contracts between suppliers and networks. If I had other information
I'd also have to be careful about supplying it as it may have been
supplied to me in commercial confidence.

However, what I can say is that you're fundamentally wrong in how you
see costs.

You seem to think you buy an entire network and then add disk space to
hold more subscribers.

Network dimensioning is done on several variables, not just disk storage
(which as I said above is something I don't believe anyone cares about
unless it runs out at the wrong moment).

Networks also consist of lots of components which are bought from lots
of suppliers and each of which is subject to a probably unique agreement
and licensed separately.

So if a network operator goes to Ericsson/Nokia/Siemens/ZTE/Huawei etc
to buy an HLR/HSS (one of the key components in terms of holding
subscribers) then they will not sell you a platform that you can just
chuck more disks in and expand the capacity - it will often be licensed
on an annual basis on various parameters including subscribers -
instantly giving you a per subscriber price.

You may not think that is fair or reasonable, but that's how the market
works (often it's the operators who prefer opex rather than capex
pricing because it better reflects their revenue streams).

And in terms of subscribers it doesn't stop at the HLR/HSS, chuck in the
AuC/AAA, EIR, OCS, CRM, Voicemail, VoLTE AS, IMS core etc etc, each of
which has a vendor who gets their per subscriber piece....

And that's before you get into the scarcity of numbers and the problems
of managing them (telcos got profligate with them and complacently just
used ranges when they could and then allowed those ranges to get sparse
over time, rather than properly reclaiming and reusing them).

Am 19.07.2019 um 00:19 schrieb MissRiaElaine:
On 18/07/2019 22:32, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:

I have a landline installed but it’s never had a telephone connected
to it.
In the previous place I lived, I did have a telephone connected, and the
only calls I ever received were for previous users of that number.

If you have a landline, surely it's cheaper to use it for calls than a
mobile..? For us, it's still cheaper to use our landline than a mobile.
As I said, a mobile is an emergency device for us, 99.9% of the calls we
make can wait until we're home.

In Germany, this is not the caseany more. You can have a mobile
contract with free calls and SMS to all German numbers for €6 per month;
an land line with free calls to all German land lines and expensive
calls to German mobiles costs €20 per month. My mother-in-law now has a
mobile instead of a land line in her OAP home.

In article ,
Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:
Usenet is social media

More like antiocial media :-D

--
Natalie M. Amery, http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~nmamery/ #####
"Mm, builders are inconsiderate sometimes. o__#######
Like the one that put the A11 there, \'#######
right under the roof of my car like that " - Aquarius, alt.fan.eddings

In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
You can have one-month rolling contracts, say £10 a month. Some
operators may call it PAYG but it's still a contract as far as I'm
concerned

It's not a contract, and calling it such muddies discussion such as
this.

You do also get one-month rolling contracts that actually are
contacts. I have one with Vodafone.

--
Natalie Amery. I cannot tell how silently he suffered,
##### As with his peace he graced this place of tears,
#######__o Or how his heart upon the cross was broken,
#######'/ The crown of pain to three-and-thirty years. - Fullerton.

In article , wrote:
If the number belongs to a real network not a virtual one, what are the
other costs then? Unless its used up its entire allocation of numbers it
won't be losing any money so tell me what I've missed. You and Perry are very
good at being supercilious, a bit less hot on supplying actual information.

Actually the ways that ofcom charge for number blocks are many and
confusing. Including a proposal (I don't know if it went anywhere)
that they would charge for _unused_ numbers in allocations...


--
Natalie Amery. 'Be still, and acknowledge that I am God,
##### supreme over nations, supreme over the world.'
#######__o Yahweh Saboath is with us,
#######'/ our citadel, the God of Jacob. - Ps46:10-11 (NJB)

In message , at 11:32:50 on Mon,
22 Jul 2019, Natalie Amery remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
You can have one-month rolling contracts, say 0 operators may call it PAYG but it's still a contract as far as I'm
concerned

It's not a contract, and calling it such muddies discussion such as
this.

You do also get one-month rolling contracts that actually are
contacts. I have one with Vodafone.

For the umpteenth time, I would expect that to come within the hybrid
category I've mentioned.

If you can cancel such an arrangement at any time, then in mobile-speak
it's not "a contract". They are much more of a monthly PAYG auto-topup
(rather than a YouveRunOutOfCredit auto-topup).
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 14:32:55 on Sun, 21 Jul
2019, remarked:
Ok Mr Telecoms Expert, exactly how much disk space does all the relevant
information about a single cellular phone number take up then? Obviously you

have the figures to hand so please share them.

I can't explain something like this when you have completely the wrong
architectural and business model as an underlying assumption.

Go on, live dangerously, give it a go. How much data does it take up? Or are
you going to claim that telecoms companies use dilithium quantum computers
that store information in hyperspace rather than standard databases or hash
maps?

Unless the system is completely insane there should be no relation. Perhaps
you're going to tell us next that radio stations transmitter charges are
based on the number of listeners they have?

A Freeview-type transmitter might well charge based on the number of
stations you wish to transmit (eg CH4 and Ch4+1, costing more than just
Ch4).

Yes, congratulations - because each station takes up bandwidth. How much
bandwidth does an unused phone number use?

Apart from that, your ability to fail to distinguish between
broadcasting and telecoms speaks volumes.

Your refusal to acknowledge an obvious analogy speaks volumes that you've
been painted into a corner.

Let us know when you get to Australia.

I'll take that as a no, you can't back up anything you said. As I suspected.

I'm not here to provide someone as wilfully obtuse as you, a primer in
cellphone architecture. Although we both know you aren't so much being
wilfully obtuse as deliberately trolling.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 11:36:51 on Mon,
22 Jul 2019, Natalie Amery remarked:

Actually the ways that ofcom charge for number blocks are many and
confusing. Including a proposal (I don't know if it went anywhere)
that they would charge for _unused_ numbers in allocations...

That sound a bit like double council tax for homes left empty. In other
words, pursuing a public policy objective and nothing at all to do with
"cost-plus" accounting.
--
Roland Perry