How to Terminate Cell Phone Contracts

Get out your cell phone contract and review it for information on the early termination fees and processes. You need to have specific information on the cost and whether or not your carrier offers a pro-rated amount. A pro-rated amount deducts money from the termination fee depending on how long you have had your service. Calculate the amount you should owe if this is the case.

Review your cell phone plan. Know exactly what services you signed up for originally, this is very important information for you to be certain about.

Review your cell phone bills. Look at your detailed charges. If any of the charges differ from the cell phone plan that you signed up for this is called a "materially adverse" item. A materially adverse item may be grounds for you to terminate your contract without having to pay a fee. Go back to your cell phone contract and look for the "materially adverse clause" and read what your provider has defined it as.

Write down the pro-rated fee you expect (if any) and any materially adverse items (if any) on a sheet of paper.

Call your provider's customer service number and request to speak to a manager regarding termination of contract. Write down the day and time of your call and the name or employee number of anyone you speak to on your paper.

Tell the manager you wish to terminate your contract. If you have materially adverse items make sure you use the term "materially adverse" when talking about them. When you have completed the termination process write down a short summary of the conversation for your own records.

Cell Phone Contracts:

Mobile Phone Service Problems

The cell phone is an important device for many people. Many people experience problems with their mobile service, and are unsatisfied with their service provider. According to Consumer Reports, cell phone service is one of the lower-rated services in the past six years.

Limited coverage or network
One of the problems that people experience with their mobile service is the limited coverage. There are certain areas in the house, such as the basement, where their cell phones don't get reception. There are also places without cell phone reception, even in wide open spaces, and these are generally called "dead cell phone zones."

Customer Service
Another complaint that service providers get is in regards to customer service. Customers complain that agents working for service providers are not very helpful when discussing issues about their phones and plans. A cell phone service provider, Sprint, said that even if they have tried to solve customer issues, customers may continuously contact the company for complaints even as many as 100 times a month.

Automatic fees
Customers may notice that their cell phone bill is higher on a certain month, possibly because of fees that the service provider tacks on without their knowledge. This may include fees for additional services the customer didn't sign up for. To avoid having to pay for these fees, customers may need to check the itemization of their bill and contact their providers to take some services off.

Penalties
Another problem with mobile service providers is the penalties charged. Many view early termination fees as unfair, where consumers have to pay service providers amounts up to $200 for canceling their contracts. Other fees include activation fees and number portability fees.

Solutions
Cell phone providers have decreased early termination fees and have now implemented pro-rated fees for canceling contracts early. In terms of coping with limited network, cell phone service providers have interactive online coverage maps by which consumers can check signal strength in the areas they spend the most time in. Customers may also switch service providers to one that suits them better.

Problems with Mobile IP and Their Solutions

Mobile IP, the outcome of the convergence of mobile communication technologies and the IP network, is the core technology to implement NGN applications in traditional networks. It supports network mobility, two-way access, and real-time multimedia services.

As a recommended Internet standard, Mobile IP is the earliest solution to mobility management of IP network. The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) gives a complete description of Mobile IP in RFC2002. Along with the development of IPv4 to IPv6, Mobile IP is also evolving to Mobile IPv6.

Problems with Mobile IP:

Although growing rapidly, Mobile IP still has the following problems:

(1) "Triangle routing" Problem

The Communication Host (CH) has to send packets to the Mobile Host (MH) via the Home Agent (HA), while the MH sends packets directly to the CH. As the communication in the two directions follows different routes, the problem of "triangle routing" arises, which leads to low efficiency especially when the MH is far away from the HA and the CH is near to the MH.

(2) Handoff Problem

Handoff problem means that the HA sends the IP packets of the MH to the original foreign network via the tunnel because it doesn’t know the latest Care of Address (CoA) of the MH during the period starting when the MH leaves the original foreign network and ending when the HA receives the new registration address of the MH. As a result, these dropped IP packets have an influence on the communication between the MH and the CH especially when handoff occurs frequently or the MH is far away from the HA.

(3) Problem of Intra-Domain Movement

The frequent intra-domain movement of the MH within a small area will lead to frequent handoff. Consequently, a great amount of registered messages are generated in the network and the network performance is greatly affected.

(4) QoS Problem

In the mobile environment, it is hard to provide QoS over Mobile IP due to dynamically varying wireless network topologies, limited network resources, unpredictable effective bandwidth and high error rate.

Solutions:

Solution to "Triangle Routing" Problem For Mobile IP, routing optimization is necessary because all packets sent to the MH shall pass through the HA but the route may not be the best. After receiving the packets sent by the CH to the MH, the HA notifies the CH of the binding information about the MH, i.e., the current Foreign Agent (FA) address of the MH, and the CH encapsulates the packets and establishes the tunnel to the FA for transparent transmission. The binding information is transferred via a definite port number. If the MH moves again, the new FA will transfer the updated binding information to the old FA to ensure that the packets are transferred to the new FA. And meanwhile the HA gets the updated binding information so the subsequent packets will be transferred directly from the CH to the new FA. The mobile IP with route optimization sets high requirements on the CH. The CH shall have the ability to obtain the binding information, encapsulate the packets and establish the tunnel. Therefore the CH protocol stack needs lots of modifications.

Alcatel-Lucent Wireless IP solutions: Wireless All Around: