I remember reading somewhere that in the 1920s long distance calls averaged at least $3 per minute , when you consider the rate of inflation that was a huge amount of money back then !
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Kevin Haendiges
NAHC Life Member
NRA Member
Wildlife Forever Member
GOA Member
Buckmasters Member
http://hunting-indiana.com
Once they get broadband here I'm seriously considering dumping our local and long distance carrier too and going strictly cell phone , our phone bills are outrageous and we don't call all that much , especially LD . The way they explained it to me a lot of what we're seeing on our landline bill is service charges , fees , and taxes , more in fact than we're running up in actual use charges . $90 a month just for the priveledge of being hooked up and limited calling ? I don't think so , even a cell phone would be cheaper for us .
Ironically , it will be them supplying the broadband connection and possibly the cell phone service as well ...
__________________
Kevin Haendiges
NAHC Life Member
NRA Member
Wildlife Forever Member
GOA Member
Buckmasters Member
http://hunting-indiana.com
People moan and groan about inflation and the price of milk and gas but they often ignore how drastically the cost of telecommunication services has dropped in the last few years. I'm probably paying 80% less for home+ cell phone service than I was a few years ago. That will offset a lot of price increases ina household budget.
This topic is not about Hunting or Politics . . . but I will bite nonetheless.
The simple answer for "why do we pay $0.05/minute" is competition.
AT&T was granted, maybe around 1932 but my memory is uncertain, a monopoly on phone services in the United States. No, this was not the flavor of corrupt influence Dick Cheney was into before Big Oil. There was a quid pro quo involved. The thought was, how could any company afford to provide phone service out to rural areas if competition could knock off their lucrative big city markets. Thus, a monopoly was granted, and urban customers (and even more particularly business customers) service rates subsidized the costs of rural subscribers.
In 1982 AT&T was broken up and competition was allowed to flourish. There were lots of benefits to this change. Rates came down for long distance services. New devices were allowed to be inserted into the network which formerly were disallowed because they weren't "company" equipment (don't ask "which company" you dummy! There was only ONE company, AT&T, hence "the company"!!!). With one company, only one kind of thinking could flourish. With multiple companies, multiple kinds of thinking could flourish. For example, AT&T thinking emphasized efficient utilization of network plant and long service lives of equipment. But there are alternative values to efficiency and long service life.
I would not say AT&T was the devil or a bad company. They created the greatest phone system in the world and provided ubiquitous phone service for a spacious nation. As a BS Electrical Engineer graduate, my eyes brighten up and my back straightens when I hear the august names of Nyquist, Shannon, Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley, Kernighan, Ritchie, just some of the great engineers who did their greatest work at AT&T Bell Labs. But great things came from splitting up AT&T and encouraging competition, and I don't just mean the dropping of long distance rates. I don't see how the Internet would have flourished in a Bell-head network.
5 cents a minute or a Dollar?
