TIP: Click on subject to list as thread! ANSI
echo: cellular
to: ALL
from: CHUCK BOGORAD
date: 1996-07-29 20:18:00
subject: let`s talk about fraud!

hi!
i wonder if anyone outside the 'iron curtain' sees my mail ;)
i'd like to talk about economical and social aspects of cellular fraud. as 
far as i understand it's still on topic (may be a bit on the edge ;). i 
performed a rough calculation and would like to know your opinion on that. 
i'm going to talk only about one of the three cellular systems available here 
(we have a NMT-450i - that's the only one "clone-free", GSM-900 and NMAPS). 
i'll talk about the latter.
technical: it's the standard NAMPS, but the paging channels are not 
333/333/334 (as in the US) but 1011/1011/1012. the provider has some 15 
cellcites. the coverage is reasonable (not very good because of old buildings 
with walls of 1 meter thick).
the chagres:
- $8 registration
- $20 "testing" - if you're registering your own phone (not bought there)
- ~$50 mothly fee ("money for nothing")
- $.42 per minute daytime  (0800-2000)
- $.23 per minute at night (2000-0800)
- $.10 per minute weekends (0800 Sat-2000 Sun)
the phones are terribly expensive:
- ~$250 TeleTac 200
- ~$350 MicroTac 1500
- ~$400 DPC 650
- ~$650 UltraLite ("gold" - with wierd menu)
- ~$1400 Elite
(here i must say that the phones are still alot cheaper then the other 
companies offer)
the company here has an estimated 5,000 subscribers. in addition to that i 
think there is some 5% clones. a "standard" customer makes some 120-150 
minutes air time per month (i'm very interested in your figures!), a cloner - 
about half of that per day, making some 60*25=1500min/month. let's say 
there's about the same amount of customers who do not pay for their phones 
"legally" (their company is paying; the cellular provider doesn't charge for 
that account for some reason - it's a government phone or smth). that gives 
us some interesting figures:
normal      5000*150=750,000
legal heavy 250*1500=375,000
making a total of some 1,125,000 "legal" minutes and some 375,000 "illegal" 
minutes. that means that some 1/3rd of all calls are stolen! what would you 
say?
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* Origin: (2:5030/83)

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