Dear other phone companies, why can't you do something as simply awesome as this?

[andrewducker]

After every phone call I make I get a popup message that looks like this:


Which tells me exactly how many of my monthly minutes I have left. I assume it travels over some part of the GSM back-channel.

Now, why on earth don't other phone companies do this?

Comments

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

...because if they did, people wouldn't go over their quotas as much?

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

It is. It'll be a network-sourced SMS, which can be handled by the phone OS for network messaging.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Every PAYG Mobile I've ever had did that so that's going back 16+ years. Isn't Giff Gaff classified as PAYG? I think you can get it switched on for a contract but generally the mobile companies would rather you went over your limits so they can charge you excess.

[theweird1ne.livejournal.com]

I had an app that did that. Then i realised that i barely use my mins... was good for internets allowance too actually.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I don't remember the last time I had to keep track of minutes... under my current Verizon Wireless I plans, I purchased a large enough plan to get the Free Friends and Family Calling (or whatever it's called), where we can specify up to ten phone numbers to call that don't count against minutes; adding to their default "all calls to/from VZW phones are free minutes", we barely touch the 1400 minutes (or maybe 2100?) on the smallest plan that includes F&F. However, if we were to drop down to the next plan, that has fewer minutes overhead but doesn't include Free F&F, we'd totally run over.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I have an app I can tap to check that I keep on my homescreen, which I occasionally look at. I guess alerts like the one above would be useful, if you had a number of minutes low enough that you might go over. Personally, I have 2000 minutes, 5000 texts and infinite data so the alerts would be more annoying than helpful in my case.