Mexico adds fee for international calls to cellphones

Say adios to cheap calls to cellphones in Mexico.

The Mexican government began imposing a surcharge a week ago of at least 14 cents a minute to complete international calls to cellphones, doubling or tripling the rates callers pay.

"It's going to hurt the average consumer significantly," said Jeff Compton, an executive at Telscape Communications, a Monrovia, Calif., phone company catering to Hispanics.

Southern California boasts the nation's largest Hispanic population, about 80 percent of whom trace their roots to Mexico. Many still have family there, making Mexico one of the most popular destinations for international calls and a rich source of business for phone companies.

Some 20,000 San Diego customers of Telscape have been paying a penny a minute to call friends and relatives in Tijuana. That cost will climb to 17 cents a minute. Sprint Nextel customers who pay $5 a month for free calls to Mexican border towns and 5 cents a minute to elsewhere now will pay an extra 18 cents a minute.

Daniel Onorato, 17, uses his employer's cellphone to call his parents and two sisters in Mexico City every few days, and each of them uses a cellphone.

"He'd better not call anymore," chided his employer, downtown fruit stand operator Lorena Lopez. Her bill already tops $300 a month.

Gabriel Lasco, 27, a waiter at Maria's Pescado Frito at the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles, already knows how to get around the surcharges to call his father in Mexico City. "I guess I'll have to call the house phone now," he said, "but it's so much less convenient."

But carpenter Emilio Ochoa, 26, will absorb the cost of calling his family in Jalisco.

"I have to call my family, so I'm not going to stop," he said. "I'm not happy about the price, but what can I do?"

Said Lisa Pierce, an industry analyst with Forrester Research: "Look at who the fees hurt: The people who can least afford them."

The surcharge was imposed by Mexico's version of the Federal Communications Commission as part of an overhaul of how mobile phone companies bill their customers. For six years, Mexico has been moving toward a system where the calling party pays all the costs of a call to a cellphone, including long-distance charges. That makes the incoming call free to mobile users.

Mexico's surcharge does not apply to calls made to landline phones in Mexico nor to walkie-talkie systems used by some cellphone carriers. At least four smaller Mexican cellphone carriers have obtained a court order to block the surcharge.

But the country's largest phone company, Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, said it would abide by the Mexican authority's new fees. The fees are negotiated individually between Mexican phone companies and their counterparts in other countries.

Most of the money collected will go to companies controlled by entrepreneur Carlos Slim, the world's third-richest man with a net worth of $30 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Slim controls Telmex, which has 94 percent of the Mexican landline market, and America Movil, whose Telcel subsidiary has 80 percent of the Mexican mobile market.

AT&T and Sprint have been alerting their customers about the new fee, but customers still unaware of the higher cost "may suffer sticker shock," said Sprint spokeswoman Kathleen Dunleavy. Verizon Communications will absorb the fee for three months as it notifies customers, spokesman Jonathan Davies said.

Having the caller pay cellphone costs is prevalent in Europe. The trend never caught on here, despite efforts to implement it.