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?

Do many people still pay long-distance charges? For many years we've had
plans with "free" nationwide calling. For a while when kids were in school
out of state we had a WATS line so they could fall us free. I cancelled it
later because I was getting too many calls from Puerto Rico where the
callers couldn' speak English.


--
Pete

On 23/12/2017 14:47, Peter Flass wrote:
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?

Do many people still pay long-distance charges? For many years we've had
plans with "free" nationwide calling. For a while when kids were in school
out of state we had a WATS line so they could fall us free. I cancelled it
later because I was getting too many calls from Puerto Rico where the
callers couldn' speak English.



In the UK there are various deals which include calls on landlines and
mobiles but there are local and long distance changes if you don't make
use of them, at least on landlines. The deals don't (generally) cover
international calls. 'Roaming' is now included on mobiles, at least in
the EU, although many companies off packages which include other
countries. The exact rules etc vary from company to company.