In the USA/Canada, mobile phone numbers are just normal numbers, you can’t tell they are mobile. In fact, you can change from a landline to a cell phone and keep your number the same.

Think of it thus more like call forwarding. You can purchase call forwarding service for your number, and forward calls to a number somewhere else, perhaps even in another country, or a mobile. When you do this, you, the recipient of the call doing the forwarding, are the one who pays for the special cost, and everybody thinks this is the way it should be. Otherwise, people might call you and with what they think is a free local call and be shocked to see a 30 cent/minute charge on it to call where you really are.

It’s the same with cell phones. You are the one who has chosen the phone with the special costs to call, so of course you are the one who pays to receive calls on it. Nobody knows it is your mobile number unless you told them. The only way around this would be to have a screening message that says, “Caution, you are calling a mobile, and this call will cost 30 cents a minute. Hang up now to avoid the cost.” Nobody wants that, and it would also reveal that the number is mobile.

The reason to NA system is superior is that the person choosing the carrier is the person paying the cost. Thus you have a market, because the companies compete on cost. Some even offer free incoming plans. In other countries, the person who selected the cost doesn’t pay, the sucker calling pays, with no market power to reduce rates, other than by telling friends, “I don’t like to call you because Vodaphone’s rates are too high” or whatever.

In a market, the person paying must be the one who choses and drives competition.