On 23/12/17 13:08, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
On Fri, 22 Dec 2017 15:39:08 -0600, Charles Richmond
wrote:

[snip]

Back in the bad old days, two houses on different sides of the same
freeway... a phone call from one house to the other... was a
long-distant toll call !!! That is sort of analogous to speaking
dialects !!! :-)

I always thought that that nonsense could have been solved by
using a better zone system. A call to the same zone or only one zone
away would be local; the others would be long distance. Set the zones
to allow for cities and geography.

Would this have been workable?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko


I don't often use 'snail mail' in Europe (we are still in Europe) but,
as I recall, for some time it has been possible to send a letter within
the EU for the same cost as a local one. As I recall, when this was
introduced, the rationale was that the bulk of the infra structure was
in place in each country and if, for example, I paid more to post to
Germany (I'm in the UK) the UK didn't 'hand over' any of the extra I
paid to any Post Office 'on route'- in the end it all just 'balanced out'.

Logically, the same must apply for telephone calls. Obviously a 'long
distance call' uses resources but, in the round, things balance out.
There will be exceptions- areas which have low numbers of travellers
etc. but, for most cases, surely the logic applies.

A mobile call in the UK costs the same if the two 'ends' are 50m apart
or 300miles. Why not the same for landline calls?