If you force your phone to roam on Sprint and you call another Sprint customer, would it be considered mobile to mobile or does it come out of your anytime minutes?
No, just because your phone is on another network, doesn't mean that you are mobile to mobile with people on that network. The network will know that you are not native to it. You probably will still be able to use your mobile to mobile minutes while on another network, but only to people of your native network.
I think you missunderstood my question. If I am a Sprint customer and I force my phone to roam on say Verizon's network, if I call another Sprint customer is it considered mobile to mobile, even though I am roaming?
As far as I know mobile to mobile has to be on Sprint/Nextel's native network. However there's been talk that Sprint might be changing their poilcy soon to allow for that. But as of right now it's not included.
It is not mobile to mobile for the person that is roaming. But if I am roaming and I call Larry, he will get mobile to mobile, I will not.
These questions always interest me because each mobile carrier handles them differently, and even the same mobile carrier may change its handling over time. For some carriers, a mobile to mobile call is only possible when both parties are on the native network, which ends up charging both parties for the call. Sprint appears to be inbetween, where the party on the native network gets mobile to mobile. I haven't seen this on my bill, but it is easy to test so I probably will -- just to be sure. Verizon (at least since the America's Choice plans) came out several years ago allows mobile to mobile regardless of weather either party is roaming. They do this because their America's Choice network incorporates roaming partners in many places, and they want this to be transparent to the customer. Interestingly, Sprint recently changed their maps to show included roaming partners as part of their own network, and they already permit data roaming without an additional fee. Stay tuned, we may actually get mobile to mobile even while roaming down the road. This would be more consistent with them advertising coverage without making the customer understand when they are roaming or not. -Dan PS: Another billing interest of mine is how spanned calls are handled. Verizon, at least in the west, would bill a call starting at 8pm, running until 10pm with 9pm nights as 1 hour peak, and 1 hour off-peak (which I really liked). To my knowledge, Sprint will bill the entire call in the time period it began-- but Sprint does have 7pm (or even 6pm) nights.
Cingular will also bill the call from when it started even if you go into the N&W time period. AT&T Wireless would switch the minute useage from Anytime to N&W once you hit 9:00 PM. I miss that feature, since if your on a call and you hit 9PM you have to hang up & call back to get N&W minutes.
Re: Roaming question- spanned calls Yes, I miss that feature too. Opponents may argue that a call which begins at 5:59am lasting two hours gets billed as off-peak (assuming off-peak ends at 6am). In other words, the non-spanned billing benefits early birds. I don't know about you, but this would never happen to me. On the other hand, there are many occasions when I start a call right before my off-peak begins, and yes, short of hanging up and re-dialing the entire call is billed as peak minutes. AT&T in particular was who I was thinking of in terms of saying some carriers change. The old AT&T wireless had spanned calling, and calling your voice mail was mobile to mobile minutes. They also had plans including a home number as mobile to mobile (even many years ago). Anyway, all of this stuff tends to re-occur from time to time in the form of "new" promotions. Verizon has the best deal for folks on the unrecognized features category. They have mobile to mobile even when roaming, spanned time period billing, and my favorite is that they support both conditional and unconditional call forwarding for just the cost of minutes. In fact, they even permit forwarding your call to any domestic long distance number for no additional charge (just uses minutes). T-Mobile is interesting because their voice mail is the same as conditional call forwarding, and they include a bucket of 500 of these minutes (or at least they did when I was a customer). This permitted callers to leave you messages without using minutes, but it also enabled "*92" conditional call forwarding for free (up to 500 minutes). If you needed unconditional forwarding, set it with the same *92 then turn off the phone-- same effect for free.
Re: Roaming question- spanned calls I was under the impresion from people that they do Not have the Spanned time period for calls going into the N&W period. I also believe Cingular has M2M from off network as well but I don't remember and don't want to be yelled at if I am wrong.
Re: Roaming question- spanned calls 1) Verizon definitely supports spanned call billing at least in the West. Most of the inconsistencies of the former merged partners have been eliminated, but this may be one that continues in some places (i.e. out east). 2) Yes, Cingular did it first. I mean including mobile to mobile even when roaming, which is what drove Verizon to do it too. Sorry I forgot to mention that. Cingular eliminated the voice mail counts as mobile to mobile, and free phone calls to a home phone number (except for their fast-forward customers). The also charge for call forwarding. Sprint is the worst for call forwarding-- they charge 20 cents extra for each minute, and don't even have conditional call forwarding (even if you are willing to pay for it).
i was under the impression M2M doesnt count when roaming but N&W does.........Verizon..is really weird.......if a Verizon customer blocks their number then calls another Verrizon customer.it doesnt count as M2M your right......every copmpany has a different policy.....
Right now it would not be mobile to mobile. But since Sprint is changing their coverage to include more free roaming, in time there will be mobile to mobile while roaming. Over at Sprintusers they have been talking about this. On the next gen of Sprint phones, your phone will not even tell you when you are roaming. Because roaming and Sprint's native coverage will all be the same. Look at the new coverage maps and you will see this starting to happen.
