Roaming call refused from UP Michigan

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

We have a ->really antique local-only plan which has us roaming
almost everywhere (it's cheap; 2 phones and 100 shared minutes for
$30/month). That's never been a problem because the cost of most
calls made when we're out of town are reimbursed.

But, my wife was traveling in the upper peninsula of Michigan (Iron
River) and while she had a signal, when she tried to call back to her
office she got some sort of intercept message telling her that her
call couldn't (or wouldn't) be completed (sorry, she doesn't recall
the exact message).

I was under the assumption that so long as the phone had a useable
signal of some sort, the carrier would complete the call, even if (or
maybe especially if) the call would cost a few dollars.

What might have been going on?

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@visi.com

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

"Bert Hyman" <bert@visi.com> wrote in message
news:Xns950B63C699E0EVeebleFetzer@news.visi.com
> We have a ->really antique local-only plan which has us roaming
> almost everywhere (it's cheap; 2 phones and 100 shared minutes for
> $30/month). That's never been a problem because the cost of most
> calls made when we're out of town are reimbursed.
>
> But, my wife was traveling in the upper peninsula of Michigan (Iron
> River) and while she had a signal, when she tried to call back to her
> office she got some sort of intercept message telling her that her
> call couldn't (or wouldn't) be completed (sorry, she doesn't recall
> the exact message).
>
> I was under the assumption that so long as the phone had a useable
> signal of some sort, the carrier would complete the call, even if (or
> maybe especially if) the call would cost a few dollars.
>
> What might have been going on?

Had the same thing happen almost daily when I was in Alaska. Almost every
morning when I tried to make a call, I got some voice prompt asking for a CC
number, yet in the afternoon, calls went thru fine.

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

Bert Hyman <bert@visi.com> wrote:

>> Had the same thing happen almost daily when I was in Alaska. Almost
>> every morning when I tried to make a call, I got some voice prompt
>> asking for a CC number, yet in the afternoon, calls went thru fine.
>
> In this case though, nobody asked for a credit card; the message
> simply said "Get Lost" (or words to that effect).

"Your call can not be completed" is a standard message I get on both my
Verizon landline and my Verizon wireless line when I mis-dial a call, for
example when I only dial five digits instead of six... it doesn't necessarily
mean there is no roaming coverage in the UP, although there might not have
been any in your particular spot.

--
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Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

George@nospam.invalid (George) wrote in
news:jJadnUQ0crHaeUzdRVn-uQ@adelphia.com:

> There is an area I sometimes visit that was exactly like that.
> Apparantly VZW had no agreement of any kind with them. You would
> try to make a call and it presented a weirdly worded message, if
> you answered additional prompts it eventually asked for a credit
> card.

Maybe that was it and my wife simply didn't listen long enough. I
couldn't imagine any carrier passing up an opportunity to make a few
bucks for one call :-).

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@visi.com

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.verizon (More info?)

On 17 Jun 2004 14:48:46 GMT, Bert Hyman <bert@visi.com> wrote:

>I was under the assumption that so long as the phone had a useable
>signal of some sort, the carrier would complete the call, even if (or
>maybe especially if) the call would cost a few dollars.

There is no requirement for carriers to complete calls (other than 911
calls) from phones in situations where there's no roaming agreement.
Most -- but not all -- carriers will hand roamers off to credit card
services where technically feasible (i.e., when they aren't GSM, since
there's apparently no easy way to do "unregistered roamer" services in
GSM like there is in AMPS, CDMA, and IS-136 TDMA.

In this case it looks like the phone picked up Dobson in an area where
there's no ALLTEL coverage -- and VZW and Dobson seem to utterly hate
each other, and Dobson is A-side and you're in a VZW B-side market, so
"no roaming agreement" is almost certainly the case. If the phone was
actually on ALLTEL and not Dobson, something is terribly broken.

-SC
--
Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/
....
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