Been wondering for a while if Long Distance calling is really so hard to do that a phone company has to charge extra for its use. Personally, I don’t believe that they can justify charging more for calling anywhere in the country nowadays. Maybe 50 years ago it would have been a strain on their network, but TODAY?!?! I can’t believe it is anything more than a scam.
Can anyone verify if they actually do need more money for me to call long distance?
Just as a longer call occupies their equipment and bandwidth for more time, a long-distance call is occupying more equipment - more cable, more switches, more signal repeaters, etc. Doesn’t it seem fair to pay more if you’re using more of their resources?
Hmm, that’s interesting. Let me see if I understand this correctly.
When I make a local call, say, I guess I’m only using up one “slot” in the phone system, and I decrease the total available capacity of my local “phone region” by 1. (pardon my imprecise terminology :))
When I make a long-distance call, then, I’m decreasing the total available capacity of several different “phone regions” then, since every one of them along the way needs to reserve capacity for me?
Is that roughly the way it works, or am I off in left field? I never really thought about long-distance calling this way.
Not really. The phone network consists of zillions of small, somewhat isolated geographical areas, controlled by one or more Central Offices. Every phone line in your town is connected to a big giant switch at a Central Office. (A large town or city will have several COs.) The COs that are further away are connected to each other via Long Distance lines and big inter-city switching centers.
When you make a local call, all that happens is that your central office must connect your circuit to some other one accross town. Often, that other circuit is connected to the same big switch, making the job easy. Otherwise, the signal might have to be sent over a short line to the office accross town which will connect you.
When you make a long distance call, your signal must be routed by your CO to the appropriate long distance line, which may go through several other steps in order to finally connect you to your friend’s CO accross the country. Often, these lines and equipment will be owned by a different company (or companies) than that which provides your local service. In any case, the operation of providing long distance service is much more complicated and involved than placing a local call. The longer the distance (in terms of network coverage, not necessarily geography), the higher the price.
I can see why a long distance call is more expensive then a local call, but why are the most expensive calls (at least here in the central US) those that are within the same state, but not local (usually meaning it’s outside of the town you are in)?
It’s much more expensive for me to call 40 miles then it is to call 1000.
from what I’ve heard, the technological cost of a long distance call is only trivially more than a local call. In the order of pennies at most. What really makes it more expensive is the regulatory costs. Companies need to be able to co-ordinate payment plans and differing standards and the like.
A “scam” is when you are being cheated and if the phone company is delivering what they promise in exchange for you payment then it is not a scam. You may like or not like their price structure but it is not a scam.
Now, let us use some common sense, shall we? Suppose you call your friend up the street. Your call goes to your phone exchange and from there to his home. Now, suppose you call your friend across the country, now your call goes from your home to your exchange from where it has to be carried across the country to his exchange and from there to his home. You might see the difference between both cases is that in the second case it has to be carried across the country. You think that costs nothing? If you think you can do that at no cost I suggest you start your own company and in short time you will have wiped ATT, MCI, Sprint and the rest out of the way and you will be immensely rich.
I am an electrical engineer and work in related fields and I am amazed at how cheaply we can call and transmit data. Every time I call on the phone, send an email or download a web page, I am using thousands of miles of fiber optics that span the planet over the continents and the seas. It has taken millions of man-hours to build this infrastructure and it is at my disposal for pennies. If you think it is expensive I can only assume you are quite young and inexperienced and you have no idea of what is behind your phone set to make it work. There are millions of people working to keep communications networks ticking. They have familes to fee, children to send to school, etc.
No, a scam is when you are getting ripped off. Sort of like the way the oil companies have been steadily increasing the gas prices lately.
Now, let me clarify.
I believe that at one time, long distance was a costly thing, and the higher prices were justified. However, with the advent of all the recent inventions lately that actually speed up communications I cannot believe that the costs are still the same.
Yeah, all the people that work there have families and blah blah blah. It aint the workers families getting all the extra dough. It’s the execs and such.
Plus, I do use common sense. You cannot tell me that in a modern world me calling 2 miles away is still long distance, while I live in a city that is actually larger than the distance between it and the neighboring town. That’s a crock. LD should at least be measured by distance. I live on the border of Ohio, Penn, and WVA. To call either town that is just across the river from me is long distance. But I can call ten times that distance to a town 20 miles away and it is a local call.
SCAM!
IIRC, the phone companies are required to give you free local calls up to something like 12 miles away. I suspect that they’re making this up on the long distance calls. They have traditionally cost more, and the companies don’t have anything else to charge you for to make up the difference.
I don’t think so. I’ve always heard from tech web sites and friends in the telco business that LD has always been cheaper than local service. This is because being a LD carrier means that you only have to support a few trunk lines between cities while local service means going in to people’s houses, wiring new subdivisions, dealing with car wrecks that take out junction boxes, that sort of thing. In fact, I’ve read several things on the Internet that say that back when AT&T was “the” phone company, local service was so cheap because AT&T was able to absorb the costs of local service with the mad cash they made on LD calls.
Perhaps an actual telco person will enter this thread and verify?
Two points here.
You know the price in advance, and you receive exactly what you expect. That is not a scam.
A company makes money by providing a service that is of greater value to you than what it costs them to provide. That is called economics.
In Econ 101 you will learn that the cost to the company does not determine what they sell it for. Some businesses have a higher profit margin than others. It doesn’t make it unfair or a ripoff, it’s just economics. Grocery stores have lower profit margins than luxury car manufacturers.
False. I work for a telco and we are not required (at least not in any state in which we operate) to offer free calls regardless of the distance involved. We offer five kinds of calls: local; extended community calling; intraLATA long distance; interLATA long distance; international long distance. Local calls are charged on a per-call basis. All other calls are charged per minute. The determination as to what is local vs “extended community calling” is a function of the area code and prefix, which determines what central office in which the switch for that number is housed. The LATA (local access transport area) is determined by the local carrier. I don’t work the tech side so I don’t know what criteria are used to determine which calls are in which LATAs.
You really sound like you believe you are entitled to some price. There is a system called the free market where companies offere their goods and services for the prices where they believe they can make a profit. You are not obligated to buy anything and it is not a scam. There is huge competition in the long distance business and if you believe you can do better you should start your own company. I work in the telecomm field and know something about it but you come across like you really just feel entitled to something for less than the asking price. The long distance compnaies compete with each other for customers. I have been scammed a few times by them (slammed, etc) but their rates are there for you to take or leave. They are no more a scam than any otehr business and if it were possible to provide long distance service at lower prices someone would be trying it.
Can you tell us on what you base this assumption? Of course the costs are not the same! It used to cost $40/min to call Europe 25 years ago. Prices have come down with competition and improving technology. Now it more like 4 cents/min to Europe. What more do you want? I have worked in the telecomm field for quite a while. You want to argue with me about this? Great! Open a thread in GD and I’ll be happy but don’t come to GQ posting such silliness.
Oh, give me a break. If you want to debate this nonsense open a thread in GD. It is just the same old nonsense we have heard a hundred times. Are you asking a question or do you want to debate? It seems the only answer you can accept is that the carriers are scamming you. If you know the answer why are you asking?
Talk to your representative in Washington DC. They are the ones who have made the system what it is on political grounds. The rate structure is the product of the politicians. Don’t blame the carriers.
Ignorance!
I read within the last couple years that the cost per call of keeping the data and printing it on bills exceeded or was to soon exceed the other costs of the call. The prediction was that long distance plans would soon be priced like local.
That has started to happen with some fixed-cost unlimited plans.
I believe that Dartmouth College did exactly that for long distance calls made from campus, because of the cost of billing. (No cite, but I thought this was in an article in the New York Times a couple of months ago.)
Actually, here is the abstract of the article I mentioned.
You can thank your state government for that one. In-state long distance is regulated and taxed by the state.
And sometimes you get the bear.
My new phone provider here in southeastern OH offered me free long distance when I signed up for local service with them.
Two billing cycle in and no LD charges have appeared.
Cellular users have been getting free long distance for ages. And at a cost less than land lines. And with more flexibility. Hell, about the only downside is the initial capital cost, which you can reduce if you’re willing to sign a contract.
I’m just upset that calls from orbiting space stations aren’t handled by AT&T and billed as regular long distance.
Boundries for call areas shouldn’t be a “scam” issue. For instance I lived in Chicago. When I moved out of the city, my car insurance dropped in half. When I moved out of Cook county to Will county it dropped in half again.
It made now sense. People who lived NORTH of Steger road in COOK county paid TWICE as much for car insurance than I did living SOUTH of Steger road.
What made me mad was because I was in WILL county I had to pay for 911 service. At the time (this has changed since) 911 couldn’t be used in WILL county. So I paid like 85¢/month for a service I couldn’t use.