About that “500″ minutes the cel company promised…

“Grab your ankles kids, you might feel some pressure”!

It has no cord, yet somehow I’m tied to a mobile phone by my work.

I now can see that the only way I’ll ever get even close to most of the 500 minutes for one flat rate that my cel provider has promised, is if I time it very carefully from pushing SEND to make one call for 499 minutes and 59 seconds, and then push END very quickly.

This is a result of the gift of “rounding up” that the phone companies have given themselves, your 2 minute and 3 seconds call will show up as 3 minutes. Multiply that by almost every call you make and consider it to be your holiday all year round gift to Ma Bell or whoever you happen to be using (or more correctly, who is using you).

The more short calls you make, the worse it gets for your total expenditure, as each call potentially offers the phone company another $ gift donation. You’d think that there could / would be a windfall profits tax in there somewhere, but you’d be wrong.

I’ve had mobile phone service since 1978, going through the permutations from MTS (mobile telephone service) and IMTS (improved mobile telephone service) in my car, then one of the first cel phones in the form of a 25 pound briefcase “mobile” (perhaps it’s mobile if you’re a weight lifter) phone. Better than the 60 pound trunk mount monster that preceded it, but with limited life span on operation from the enclosed batteries. Next came the Radio Shack 1.2 watt carry around that was about the size and shape of an old school lunch box that lead to the Motorola Brick, then (in the mid-80’s) things finally got lighter and smaller.

For example:

(Not me, just a photo from the ‘net.)

As I recall, the bill for my first cel phone had the charges shown in 6 second increments, so a 67 second call cost me one minute and two tenths, not the two minutes it would be today. Again, do the math.

I suppose I could live with most of the thieving sort of crap associated with the communications industry, I just wish their customer service people could work on finding a way to get their accent of India filtered out.

Don’t like it? Don’t call me, I’ll call you, but after 9pm or on weekends when it’s free.