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Yes, receiving calls (and text messages) is free. (unless you are roaming and then you pay the international sector of the call) As far as I know this is true

Yes, receiving calls (and text messages) is free. (unless you are roaming and then you pay the international sector of the call) As far as I know this is true not just in Europe but everywhere outside of North America. It's certainly been true in the Asian countries I've been to (I get prepaid SIM cards everywhere I visit). It comes down to the numbering plans - in the NANP (north american numbering plan), landline and mobile phone numbers are mixed together and you can't distinguish them without a database. In other countries, mobile phones have their own "mobile phones" area code which is non-geographic and applies to all mobile phones. This means that callers beforehand know if they're calling a mobile phone or a landline.

cesarb 8y ago
> In other countries, mobile phones have their own "mobile phones" area code which is non-geographic and applies to all mobile phones. Here in Brazil it's slightly different. The area codes are the same for fixed and cell phones, but if the first digit of the local part of the phone number is in the 7-9 range, it's a cell phone (if it's in the 2-6 range, it's a fixed phone; 1 is reserved for special services like emergency, 0 is the interurban/international/toll-free/etc prefix). So a number like +55-11-9xxxx-xxxx is a cell phone in the São Paulo region (area code 11), while a number like +55-11-2xxx-xxxx is a fixed phone in the same region.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  It's interesting that they've managed to merge the numbering systems in that way! Who pays the extra cost for a call to a mobile phone, the caller or the receiver? I've yet to visit any South/Central American countries, they seem to have inherited a lot of North American phone operator customs (like 850/1900 radio bands and CDMA). In the European country I used to live in, they even had different mobile area codes per-operator, so you knew which mobile operator the person you were calling to was on. They would have deals where calling someone on the same operator was free. This got complicated when number portability was added (and the number of mobile phones increased)
  - cesarb 8y ago
    > Who pays the extra cost for a call to a mobile phone, the caller or the receiver? The caller. You don't pay to receive normal calls unless you're roaming (since the caller can't know you're roaming, it wouldn't be fair to make the caller pay the roaming charges). > they seem to have inherited a lot of North American phone operator customs (like 850/1900 radio bands and CDMA). The radio bands make sense, since the whole American continent is a single ITU region. As for CDMA, here on Brazil initially it was only Vivo on CDMA and the rest on GSM, but then Vivo also switched to GSM some time ago. > They would have deals where calling someone on the same operator was free. We also have these deals here. And also here, number portability muddled things: while before for instance 95xx to 99xx was Vivo and 90xx to 94xx was Claro, nowadays you can't be sure (and that's before they added an extra "9" digit before all cell phone numbers, making them 9 digits instead of 8).

cesarb 8y ago

> In other countries, mobile phones have their own "mobile phones" area code which is non-geographic and applies to all mobile phones. Here in Brazil it's slightly different. The area codes are the same for fixed and cell phones, but if the first digit of the local part of the phone number is in the 7-9 range, it's a cell phone (if it's in the 2-6 range, it's a fixed phone; 1 is reserved for special services like emergency, 0 is the interurban/international/toll-free/etc prefix). So a number like +55-11-9xxxx-xxxx is a cell phone in the São Paulo region (area code 11), while a number like +55-11-2xxx-xxxx is a fixed phone in the same region.

kalleboo 8y ago
It's interesting that they've managed to merge the numbering systems in that way! Who pays the extra cost for a call to a mobile phone, the caller or the receiver? I've yet to visit any South/Central American countries, they seem to have inherited a lot of North American phone operator customs (like 850/1900 radio bands and CDMA). In the European country I used to live in, they even had different mobile area codes per-operator, so you knew which mobile operator the person you were calling to was on. They would have deals where calling someone on the same operator was free. This got complicated when number portability was added (and the number of mobile phones increased)
- cesarb 8y ago
  > Who pays the extra cost for a call to a mobile phone, the caller or the receiver? The caller. You don't pay to receive normal calls unless you're roaming (since the caller can't know you're roaming, it wouldn't be fair to make the caller pay the roaming charges). > they seem to have inherited a lot of North American phone operator customs (like 850/1900 radio bands and CDMA). The radio bands make sense, since the whole American continent is a single ITU region. As for CDMA, here on Brazil initially it was only Vivo on CDMA and the rest on GSM, but then Vivo also switched to GSM some time ago. > They would have deals where calling someone on the same operator was free. We also have these deals here. And also here, number portability muddled things: while before for instance 95xx to 99xx was Vivo and 90xx to 94xx was Claro, nowadays you can't be sure (and that's before they added an extra "9" digit before all cell phone numbers, making them 9 digits instead of 8).