ZM> GE>It's called the law of supply and demand. The resources of the 
ellular
ZM> GE>networks are finite. The demand for airtime is higher during the
ZM> GE>business day than it is at night. Since demand relative to supply is
ZM> GE>higher during the day, the price is also higher.
ZM> GE>
ZM> GE>It's called "capitalism".
ZM> In every other business I know of, when a product is more in demand,
ZM> generally the price falls.
The price only falls if the supply is expandable. High demand products
are manufactured in larger quantity to increase supply relative to
demand. Airtime minutes are a finite quanity. There are only so many of
them in a day.
ZM> The only reason for higher prices during the
ZM> day for phones is because they can get away with it.
Well of course, that's one way of expressing how capitalistic laws of
supply and demand work. Any businessman with any degree of sense is
going to charge what the market will bear. Phone companies are in
business to make profits.
ZM> It's not like the
ZM> old days when more telephone operators had to be employed daytime to
ZM> cope with the volume. Nowadays it costs the same to operate 24 hours a
ZM> day for the providers because it is fully automated. In fact, logically
ZM> off-peak calls should cost more because less revenue is generated in
ZM> those times but the same amount of personnel are employed by the
ZM> providers and cost the same.
Off-peak calls cost less because there isn't enough demand for off-peak
airtime to justify a higher price. Raise the price any higher, and
people would reduce their use of cell phones during off-peak times, and
revenue would decrease. Anytime a business sets prices, it looks for the
point on the supply/demand curve where total revenue will be the
highest.
ZM> This is not capitalism, this is rip-off-ism.....
You need to do some more research into just what capitalism is all
about. It is not about companies giving up profits just to be "nice
guys". Leo Durocher summed up what happens to "nice guys" very
succinctly.
The simple fact is that if you want a cell phone that works, there has
to be a profitable cellular phone company backing it up. Without
profits, there would be no towers, no central switch, and no cellular
service.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!
 * OLX 2.1 TD * That's life in the food chain!
--- Renegade
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