CTIA pursues calling party pays

The cellular industry is asking the FCC to act quickly on calling party pays.

Federally adopted standards would require a person placing a call to a wireless phone to pay for it. The person receiving the call now generally pays for airtime.

The industry needs national standards to avoid a confusing array of different state requirements and so callers can be notified that they will be billed, said Thomas Wheeler, president and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.

The rules would not dictate a wholesale change in the billing system, however. The market should determine how and when calling party pays would begin, Wheeler said.

But the CTIA also petitioned the FCC to require local exchange carriers to share customer information with wireless carriers when the telco customer calls a cellular carrier that uses the calling party pays option.

"Let's talk beyond wireless-to-wireless competition and start talking about wireless-to-wireline competition," Wheeler said at a news conference at the CTIA's Wireless '98 show in Atlanta last week.

AT&T announced in January that it will test its calling party pays plan this summer, and Bell Atlantic, AirTouch and Ameritech already offer the option commercially in several markets.