[kwlug-disc] a present for the older guys here...

[Mark Steffen]

That’s generally how it was in Europe also. In Canada and the US generally it was flat rate for local though carriers paid each other settlement fees for calls between their networks (recipient gets $) and some CLECs including some well known local ones figured out creative ways to game that for profit when things opened up competitively.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 30, 2022, at 19:24, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> One reason why BBS's were never big where I lived (Middle East) is that the telco paradigm was radically different.
> Receiving calls of any kind was free (even long distance, or international), but making outgoing calls, even if they 
> are local, cost money. That is why the dialup internet lagged for years, because the cost ramped up as you stayed 
> online for longer. 
> 
> When the internet was made available over DSL, things started to pick up, but after many years of low adoption
> for the general public. 
> 
> What follows is a tangent ... 
> 
> That same paradigm worked well for another thing: mobile phones. Mobile phone numbers were never part of 
> an area code, but had their own area codes depending on the carrier. So instead of your phone beginning with
> 519, it was a separate area code for ALL phones that are Rogers, another code for Bell, ...etc.
> 
> That meant that those who are calling a mobile number know that it is a mobile phone, and pay for it (if their
> plan did not have unlimited). The call receiver did not pay anything for taking incoming calls. 
> 
> That is different from the North American scheme where mobile phones have an area code tied to a geographic
> area, and the caller to such a number has no idea if it is a mobile phone or landline, nor if the receiver pays 
> for incoming calls or not. 
> 
> But things are changing a bit since most carriers offer unlimited incoming and outgoing calls on mobile. 
> 
> Mobile phone adoption in the Middle East (and Europe and Asia) was for decades far ahead of North America.
> Having CDMA for a long time did not help, and also having locked phones didn't too ... 
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